This image is the cover for the book Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR, Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology

Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR, Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology

This “definitive biography of Indiana Gov. Paul V. McNutt” shows the politician’s “importance on the national stage" through the Great Depression and WWII (Indianapolis Star).

The 34th Governor of Indiana, head of the WWII Federal Security Agency, and ambassador to the Philippines, Paul V. McNutt was a major figure in mid-twentieth century American politics whose White House ambitions were effectively blocked by his friend and rival, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This historical biography explores McNutt’s life, his era, and his relationship with FDR.

McNutt’s life underscores the challenges and changes Americans faced during an age of economic depression, global conflict, and decolonialization. With extensive research and detail, biographer Dean J. Kotlowski sheds light on the expansion of executive power at the state level during the Great Depression, the theory and practice of liberalism as federal administrators understood it in the 1930s and 1940s, the mobilization of the American home front during World War II, and the internal dynamics of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

Dean J. Kotlowski

Dean J. Kotlowski is Professor of History at Salisbury University in Maryland, author of Nixon's Civil Rights: Politics, Principle, and Policy, and editor of The European Union: From Jean Monnet to the Euro.

Indiana University Press