Are There Too Many New Deal Diaries?   A few years ago Bill
Mauldin drew a cartoon to commemorate an unsung hero: a gardener
at Hyde Park who had firmly resisted the temptation to write his
memoirs of President Roosevelt. Undoubtedly Mauldin’s gardener
was indeed a hero to a reading public wearied and bewildered by
the apparently endless outpouring of memoirs and diaries about
Roosevelt and the New Deal. In the ten years since Roosevelt’s
death, the number that have appeared is so large that it bids
fair to rival the quantity on Lincoln and his administration.
From the President down, most of the New Dealers had a keen
sense of history, and many of them were ambitious to record
their roles in the stirring events of their times.  When the New
Deal came to an end, many a participant was quick to translate
his records and memories into printed memoir. Also, the diaries
of several of them appeared in print. The sheer volume of these
created a problem for the average reader of history. How could
he keep up with t