Historians take different approaches to the same material, bringing to their subject their own experience, interests, and special knowledge, as well as their own ability to pull ideas together and draw conclusions. The portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in William E. Leuchtenburg's book Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal is one historian's view of Roosevelt and a period in history. Roosevelt was president at a time of crisis, and he responded with the New Deal as a way of coping with the problems of the Great Depression. The New Deal has become a mythic beast in American political thought, praised by some as the process which solved the Great Depression, while others see it as a problematic program that outlived its usefulness and changed the way government relates to the people in a detrimental way.
David Hackett Fischer points out that the role of the historian is to be useful, something he says many historians are not because they are not professional enough and are not historians enough: "If they are to be useful as historians, then they must do so by the refinement of their professional discipline and not by its dilution" (Hackett 315). The historian helps people understand the past, foresee the future, know who they are, refine their knowledge, and teach them how to think historically.
Leuchtenburg seeks to accomplish these tasks, and he explains his position in the preface to his book, noting first that the Great Depression "was one of the turning points of American history" (Leuchtenburg xii). He notes that historians in recent years have tried to minimize the importance of the 1930s and thue the New Deal. This has been a two-edged sword because those historians have made certain important statements while at the same time minimizing the significance of the era:
They have stressed, quite properly, the continuity between the New Deal reforms and those of other periods, and especially the many debts t...