This anthology assembles the contemporary writings not only of the New Dealers—the men who devised and executed the programs of the government in the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt—but also of the "social critics" who "gathered in various stances and at various distances around the Roosevelt fires." Here is a sampling of the famous movers and shakers of the 1930's: Thurman Arnold, Henry Wallace, Rexford Tugwell, David Lilienthal, Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, John Maynard Keynes, and of course Roosevelt himself. Here too are the voices of those who thought the New Dealers were going "too far" such as Walter Lippmann and Raymond Moley, and of those who thought they were not going "far enough"; like John Dewey, W. E. B. DuBois, Norman Thomas, Lewis Mumford, and Carey McWilliams.

In his Introduction Howard Zinn defines the boundaries of the New Deal's experimentalism and attempts to explain why it sputtered out. The result is a book that captures the spirit of the New Deal—hopeful, pragmatic, humane—yet remains hardheaded about its accomplishments and failures.