Franklin And Winston

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history’s towering leaders Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one—a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children. Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations—yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR’s affections—which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides—and Winston Churchill. Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history. Meacham’s new sources—including unpublished letters of FDR’ s great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with the few surviving people who were in FDR and Churchill’s joint company—shed fresh light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle. Hitler brought them together; later in the war, they drifted apart, but even in the autumn of their alliance, the pull of affection was always there. Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.

Examines the complex relationship between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and its influence on the course of World War II, examining their individual attempts to manage and influence each other.

In this affectionate, intimate portrait, Jon Meacham refreshes our memories and offers new insights into a most remarkable personal friendship and political partnership

Best-selling author Winston Groom tells the complex story of how Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin--the three iconic and vastly different Allied leaders--aligned to win World War II and created a new world order. By the end of World War II, 59 nations were arrayed against the axis powers, but three great Allied leaders--Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin--had emerged to control the war in Europe and the Pacific. Vastly different in upbringing and political beliefs, they were not always in agreement--or even on good terms. But, often led by Churchill's enduring spirit, in the end these three men changed the course of history. Using the remarkable letters between the three world leaders, enriching narrative details of their personal lives, and riveting tales of battles won and lost, best-selling historian Winston Groom returns to share one of the biggest stories of the 20th century: The interwoven and remarkable tale, and a fascinating study of leadership styles, of three world leaders who fought the largest war in history.

Curtis Roosevelt knew what it was like to live with a president. His grandfather was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From the time Curtis, with his sister, Eleanor, and recently divorced mother, Anna Roosevelt Dall, moved into his grandparents' new home--the White House--Curtis played, learned, slept, ate, and lived in one of the most famous buildings in the world with one of its most famous residents. Curtis Roosevelt offers anecdotes and revelations about the lives of the president and First Lady and the many colorful personalities in this presidential family. From Eleanor's shocking role in the remarriage of Curtis's mother to visits from naughty cousins and trips to the "Home Farm," Upstairs at the Roosevelts' provides an intimate perspective on the dynamics of one of America's most famous families and those who visited, were friends, and sometimes even enemies.

The authoritative history of the pivotal conference between Allied leaders at the close of WWII, based on revealing firsthand accounts. Crimea, 1945. As the last battles of WWII were fought, US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—the so-called “Big Three” —met in the Crimean resort town of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast, and intermittent bonhomie, they decided on the endgame of the war against Nazi Germany and how the defeated nation should be governed. They also worked out the constitution of the nascent United Nations; the price of Soviet entry into the war against Japan; the new borders of Poland; and spheres of influence across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Greece. Drawing on the lively accounts of those who were there—from the leaders and advisors such as Averell Harriman, Anthony Eden, and Andrei Gromyko, to Churchill’s secretary Marian Holmes and FDR’s daughter Anna Boettiger—Diana Preston has crafted a masterful chronicle of the conference that created the post-war world. Who “won” Yalta has been debated ever since. After Germany’s surrender, Churchill wrote to the new president, Harry Truman, of “an iron curtain” that was now “drawn upon [the Soviets’] front.” Knowing his troops controlled eastern Europe, Stalin’s judgment in April 1945 thus speaks volumes: “Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system.”

Describes the month-long visit between world leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in December 1941, during which they discussed the strategies of the Allied powers in World War II and how to sustain peace after the war would end.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt stands astride American history like a colossus, having pulled the nation out of the Great Depression and led it to victory in the Second World War. Elected to four terms as president, he transformed an inward-looking country into the greatest superpower the world had ever known. Only Abraham Lincoln did more to save America from destruction. But FDR is such a large figure that historians tend to take him as part of the landscape, focusing on smaller aspects of his achievements or carping about where he ought to have done things differently. Few have tried to assess the totality of FDR's life and career. Conrad Black rises to the challenge. In this magisterial biography, Black makes the case that FDR was the most important person of the twentieth century, transforming his nation and the world through his unparalleled skill as a domestic politician, war leader, strategist, and global visionary--all of which he accomplished despite a physical infirmity that could easily have ended his public life at age thirty-nine. Black also takes on the great critics of FDR, especially those who accuse him of betraying the West at Yalta. Black opens a new chapter in our understanding of this great man, whose example is even more inspiring as a new generation embarks on its own rendezvous with destiny.