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More oxford <strong>books</strong> @ www.OxfordeBook.<strong>com</strong><strong>Fore</strong> <strong>more</strong> <strong>urdu</strong> <strong>books</strong> <strong>visit</strong> <strong>www.4Urdu</strong>.<strong>com</strong>FROM RUSSIA TO ROOSEVELT 37one has a right to be carefree.” 65 John Temple Graves, a popular southernwriter, was also taken with the book and began touting Rand inhis genteel Birmingham dispatch “This Morning.” Another subset ofreaders was deeply touched by the novel’s emotional power. Rand wasunsurpassed at singing the proud, forlorn song of the individual soul.One reader told Rand, “I write in difficulties. The book made such animpression on me that I am still confused. I think it’s the truth of all yousay that is blinding me. It has such depth of feeling.” 66 It was the first ofthe adoring fan letters Rand would receive throughout her career.In some important ways We the Living was an unquestioned success.The novel was widely reviewed, and almost all reviewers marveled at her<strong>com</strong>mand of English and made note of her unusual biography. Rand’spicture appeared in the newspapers, along with several short profiles.When she spoke at the Town Hall Club about the evils of collectivismthe column “New York Day by Day” pronounced her an “intellectualsensation.” Yet sales of the book were disappointing. Macmillan printedonly three thousand copies and destroyed the type afterward. Whentheir stock sold out the book effectively died. Rand’s chance at literarysuccess had been nipped in the bud. 67Disillusioned by the slow demise of We the Living, Rand began toruminate on the state of the nation. She came to political consciousnessduring one of the most powerful and rare phenomena in Americandemocracy: a party realignment. The old Republican coalition of midwesternmoralists and eastern urbanites lay crushed under the weight ofthe Great Depression. Bank failures, crop failures, and soaring unemploymenthad scorched across the familiar political landscape, destroyingold assumptions, methods, and alliances. Out of the ashes PresidentFranklin Delano Roosevelt was assembling a new coalition amongreformers, urban workers, and African Americans that would last formost of the century.At the base of this coalition was the “New Deal” Roosevelt had offeredto American voters in the campaign of 1932. The current depression wasno ordinary event, he told his audiences. Rather, the crisis signaled that theera of economic individualism was over. In the past liberalism had meantrepublican government and laissez-faire economics. Now, Rooseveltredefined liberalism as “plain English for a changed concept of the dutyand responsibility of government toward economic life.” His federal

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