FDR's Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos

A senior scholar of hemispheric relations signing off, Pike has some fun in this, his last book. While examining the origins and consequences of 1930s U.S. Latin America policy, he grants himself an autobiographical preface and the freedom to cite Peggy Lee, Clint Eastwood, Debussy, and other unlikely sources. Like Pike's previous book, The United States and Latin America (Univ. of Texas Pr., 1992), this one takes a relaxed, thematic look at social, economic, and cultural forces at work in the United States and its neighbors. Pike clearly admires FDR, in whom he sees a trickster's ability to fuse opposites--as in his imperfect foreign policy that even so contributed to an enduring ""gentleness of chaos in the New World,"" in contrast to cataclysms abroad. Readers seeking detailed analysis will be better off with Irwin Gellman's Good Neighbor Diplomacy (Johns Hopkins, 1979), still, this unique view is recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.