FDR

March 4th, 1933 - Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States of America.  Here are 10 books about him and his time.

Frank & Al: FDR, Al Smith, and the Unlikely Alliance That Created the Modern Democratic Party by Terry Golway - The inspiring story of an unlikely political partnership--between a to-the-manor-born Protestant and a Lower East Side Catholic--that transformed the Democratic Party and led to the New Deal In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Democratic Party was bitterly split between its urban machines--representing Catholics and Jews, ironworkers and seamstresses, from the tenements of the northeast and Midwest--and its populists and patricians, rooted in the soil and the Scriptures, enforcers of cultural, political, and religious norms. The chasm between the two factions seemed unbridgeable. But just before the Roaring Twenties, Al Smith, a proud son of the Tammany Hall political machine, and Franklin Roosevelt, a country squire, formed an unlikely alliance that transformed the Democratic Party. Smith and FDR dominated politics in the most-powerful state in the union for a quarter-century, and in 1932 they ran against each other for the Democratic presidential nomination, setting off one of the great feuds in American history. The relationship between Smith and Roosevelt is one of the most dramatic untold stories of early 20th Century American politics. It was Roosevelt who said once that everything he sought to do in the New Deal had been done in New York under Al Smith when he was governor in the 1920s. It was Smith who persuaded a reluctant Roosevelt to run for governor in 1928, setting the stage for FDR's dramatic comeback after contracting polio in 1921. They took their party, and American politics, out of the 19th Century and created a place in civic life for the New America of the 20th Century.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek - In an era of great national divisiveness, there could not be a more timely biography of one of our greatest presidents than one that focuses on his unparalleled strategic skills as a unifier and a consensus maker. Robert Dallek's Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions of his remarkable presidency: How did a man who came from so privileged a background become one of the greatest champions of the country's needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster such revolutionary innovations in our economic and social institutions? How did Roosevelt bring about such a profound change in America's foreign relations, leading it from isolationism to become an international superpower? By the time he became president, Roosevelt already commanded the respect and affection of millions of people through his services as assistant secretary of the Navy and governor of New York. Although many of his biographers agree that the onset of polio at the age of thirty-nine endowed him with a much greater sense of humanity, Dallek views that affliction as an insufficient explanation for his transformation into a masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms and advance a remarkably progressive agenda. He attributes Roosevelt's success to two perceptive political insights. First, he made the presidency the central, most influential institution in the political system. Under his watch the country was able to recover from the Depression and entered World War II, but more controversially, he used that power in an unsuccessful attempt to pack the Supreme Court. Second, he understood that effectiveness in the American political system depended on building consensus and commanding stable, long-term popular support. In addressing the country's international and domestic challenges, Roosevelt recognized the critical importance of remaining attentive to the full range of public sentiment regarding policy decisions--perhaps his most important lesson in effective leadership, and one that remains vital today.

The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace by David Woolner - The first hundred days of FDR's presidency are justly famous, a period of political action without equal in American history. Yet as historian David B. Woolner reveals, the last hundred might very well surpass them in drama and consequence.
Drawing on new evidence, Woolner shows how FDR called on every ounce of his diminishing energy to pursue what mattered most to him: the establishment of the United Nations, the reinvigoration of the New Deal, and the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. We see a president shorn of the usual distractions of office, a man whose sense of personal responsibility for the American people bore heavily upon him. As Woolner argues, even in declining health FDR displayed remarkable political talent and foresight as he focused his energies on shaping the peace to come.

The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency by James Tobin - With a searching new analysis of primary sources, NBCC award winner James Tobin reveals how FDR's fight against polio transformed him from a callow aristocrat into the energetic, determined statesman who would rally the nation in the Great Depression and lead it through World War II. When polio paralyzed Franklin Roosevelt at thirty-nine, people wept to think that the young man of golden promise must live out his days as a helpless invalid. He never again walked on his own. But in just over a decade, he had regained his strength and seized the presidency. This was the most remarkable comeback in the history of American politics. And, as author James Tobin shows, it was the pivot of Roosevelt's life--the triumphant struggle that tempered and revealed his true character. With enormous ambition, canny resourcefulness, and sheer grit, FDR willed himself back into contention and turned personal disaster to his political advantage. Tobin's dramatic account of Roosevelt's ordeal and victory offers central insights into the forging of one of our greatest presidents.

The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 by Nigel Hamilton - Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR's masterful--and underappreciated--command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes readers inside FDR's White House Oval Study--his personal command center--and into the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war. Time and again, FDR was proven right and his allies and generals were wrong. When the generals wanted to attack the Nazi-fortified coast of France, FDR knew the Allied forces weren't ready. When Churchill insisted his Far East colonies were loyal and would resist the Japanese, Roosevelt knew it was a fantasy. As Hamilton's account reaches its climax with the Torch landings in North Africa in late 1942, the tide of war turns in the Allies' favor and FDR's genius for psychology and military affairs is clear. This intimate, sweeping look at a great president in history's greatest conflict is must reading.

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin - Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, No Ordinary Time is a monumental work, a brilliantly conceived chronicle of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary periods in the history of the United States.
With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines--Eleanor and Franklin's marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor's life as First Lady, and FDR's White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.

Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America Into the World by Michael Fullilove - Fullilove demonstrates that America's global primacy in the second half of the twentieth century was enabled by the earlier work of Roosevelt and his five extraordinary representatives from 1939-1941. Together these men and their president took the United States into the war and, by defeating domestic isolationists and foreign enemies, into the world.

Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America by Douglas Brinkley - Douglas Brinkley's Wilderness Warrior celebrated Theodore Roosevelt's spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision. Now Brinkley turns his attention to another indefatigable environmental leader--Theodore's distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt--chronicling his essential yet undersung legacy as the founder of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the premier protector of America's public lands. FDR built state park systems and scenic roadways from scratch. Through his leadership, pristine landscapes such as the Great Smokies, the Everglades, Joshua Tree, the Olympics, Big Bend, and the Channel Islands were forever saved. Brinkley traces FDR's love for the natural world back to his youth spent exploring the Hudson River Valley and birdwatching. Forestry would soon become a consuming passion. As America's president from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt, a consummate political strategist, established hundreds of federal migratory bird refuges and spearheaded the modern movement to protect endangered species. He deftly positioned his conservation goals as economic policy to combat the severe unemployment of the Great Depression. During its seven-year existence, the CCC put nearly three million young men to work on conservation projects--including planting trees, national park preservation, pollution control, and grasslands restoration. Rightful Heritage is an epic chronicle that is both an irresistible portrait of FDR's unrivaled passion and drive and an indispensable analysis that skillfully illuminates the tension between business and nature--exploiting our natural resources and conserving them. Within the narrative are capsule biographies of such environmental warriors as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Aldo Leopold.

Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman - A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed.
Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius.
They began as close allies and friends of FDR, but the quest to shape a new Constitution led them to competition and sometimes outright warfare. SCORPIONS tells the story of these four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself.

Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman, and the Birth of the Modern World by Michael Dobbs - When Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met in Yalta in February 1945, Hitler's armies were on the run and victory was imminent.  The Big Three wanted to draft a blueprint for a lasting peace--but instead set the stage for a forty-four-year division of Europe into Soviet and western spheres of influence. After fighting side by side for nearly four years, their political alliance was rapidly fracturing. By the time the leaders met again in Potsdam in July 1945, Russians and Americans were squabbling over the future of Germany and Churchill was warning about an "iron curtain" being drawn down over the Continent.
These six months witnessed some of the most dramatic moments of the twentieth century: the cataclysmic battle for Berlin, the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, Churchill's electoral defeat, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. While their armies linked up in the heart of Europe, the political leaders maneuvered for leverage: Stalin using his nation's wartime sacrifices to claim spoils, Churchill doing his best to halt Britain's waning influence, FDR trying to charm Stalin, Truman determined to stand up to an increasingly assertive Soviet superpower.