A New Yorker Best Book of the Year “ Total Defense is so impressive because Preston is the master of his craft; his clarity and sophistication are always buttressed by illuminating evidence and well-chosen quotations, bespeaking both a great expert’s depth and an expert writer’s talent.” –Samuel Moyn, The New Republic The story of how FDR and fellow New Dealers created the idea of national security, transforming the meaning of defense and vastly expanding the US government’s responsibilities. National security may seem like a timeless notion. States have always sought to fortify themselves, and the modern state derives its legitimacy from protecting its population. Yet national security in fact has a very particular, very American, history―and a surprising one at that. The concept of national security originates in the 1930s, as part of a White House campaign in response to the rise of fascism. Before then, national self-defense was defined in terms of protecting sovereign territory from invasion. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his circle worried that the US public, comforted by two vast oceans, did not take seriously the long-term risks posed by hypermilitarization abroad. New Dealers developed the doctrine of national security, Andrew Preston argues, to supplant the old idea of self-defense: now even geographically and temporally remote threats were to be understood as harms to be combated, while ideological competitors were perilous to the “American way of life.” Total Defense shows it was no coincidence that a liberal like Roosevelt promoted this vision. National security, no less than social security, was a New Deal promise: the state was obliged to safeguard Americans as much from the guns and warships of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan as from unemployment and poverty in old age. The resulting shift in threat perception―among policymakers and ordinary citizens alike―transformed the United States, spearheading massive government expansion and placing the country on a permanent war footing. “Shows in fascinating detail how Roosevelt used similar language when talking about the social-protection policies and public-investment programmes of the New Deal and the emerging concept of national security.” ― The Economist “Preston knows how to tell a story, and tell it well. Total Defense is so impressive because Preston is the master of his craft; his clarity and sophistication are always buttressed by illuminating evidence and well-chosen quotations, bespeaking both a great expert’s depth and an expert writer’s talent.” ― Samuel Moyn , New Republic “A thoughtful new book.” ― Daniel Immerwahr , New Yorker “In showing how Roosevelt won the debate with America First and other opponents, Preston demonstrates that the president used the phrase ‘national security’ to mean that the US could not defend itself without defending other countries. In the process, he broadened the phrase into something expansive and vague that could be used to justify defending ‘values’, or ‘a way of life’, or ‘America’s place in the world’.” ― Eric Rauchway , Times Literary Supplement “A sophisticated account of how national security took shape in the 1930s…The economic and international crises of the 1930s have long been seen as inseparable, but Preston offers a fresh framework for understanding how the US grappled with their entanglement.” ― Angus Reilly , Financial Times “In the late 1930s, the concept of what constituted the United States’ necessary defense underwent a sudden and complete transformation as a long-standing, narrow focus on defense against foreign invasion gave way to the sense that threats came from anywhere and in many forms. Preston traces this metamorphosis…[his] intellectual history has obvious relevance to the current search for a foreign policy that balances the need for American global leadership and engagement against the temptation to lurch into ill-considered military action.” ― Jessica T. Mathews , Foreign Affairs “How did baby formula and kitchen cabinets come to be considered as crucial parts of America's security? Andrew Preston's important book, Total Defense , provides an answer to this question.” ― Christopher Coyne , Law & Liberty “Well-argued and often provocative…joins a growing body of scholarship that shifts the genesis of the national security state and its related foreign policy from the early Cold War to the FDR administration.” ― Brandon Buck , Reason “An incisive reconsideration of a landmark legislative program.” ― Publishers Weekly “Andrew Preston’s Total Defense does what the very best history books do: It identifies something we all take for granted―in this case, the idea of a ‘national security’ establishment―and gives it a history. Less than a century ago, the suggestion that the United States should maintain a permanent military-intelligence-industrial complex would have been anathema to most Americans. Today, it helps to structure