The Roosevelt Years

Having guided the nation through the worst economic crisis in its history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt by 1939 was turning his attention to a world on the brink of war. The second part of Roger Daniels's biography focuses on FDR's growing mastery in foreign affairs. Relying on FDR's own words to the American people and eyewitness accounts of the man and his accomplishments, Daniels reveals a chief executive orchestrating an immense wartime effort. Roosevelt had effective command of military and diplomatic information and unprecedented power over strategic military and diplomatic affairs. He simultaneously created an arsenal of democracy that armed the Allies while inventing the United Nations intended to ensure a lasting postwar peace. FDR achieved these aims while expanding general prosperity, limiting inflation, and continuing liberal reform despite an increasingly conservative and often hostile Congress. Although fate robbed him of the chance to see the victory he had never doubted, events in 1944 assured him that the victory he had done so much to bring about would not be long delayed. A compelling reconsideration of Roosevelt the president and campaigner, The War Years, 1939-1945 provides new views and vivid insights about a towering figure--and six years that changed the world.

The Roosevelt years brings together the work of leading experts in twentieth-century American history. It offers a collection of new and exciting essays on a key period, covering the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression and the Second World War.

Born in 1882 in New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered public service through the encouragement of the Democratic Party and won the election to the New York Senate in 1910. This book details his administration at the height of the Great Depression as he valiantly led the nation with the phrase, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

A renowned historian recounts how President Roosevelt inspired the country and changed forever the political, social, economic, and even the physical landscape of the United States--Cover.

"As the bombs fell on Guernica and the Blitz terrorized Britons--even before Pearl Harbor--Americans watched and worried about attacks on their homeland. In May 1941, FDR established an Office of Civilian Defense to protect Americans from foreign and domestic threats. In this book, Matthew Dallek narrates the history of the Office of Civilian Defense. He uses the development of the precursor of "homeland security" as a way of examining constitutional questions about civil liberties; the role of government in propagandizing to its own citizens; competing visions among liberals and conservatives for establishing a plan to defend America; and federal, state, and local responsibilities for citizen protection. Much of the dramatic tension lies in the preparation of communities against attack and their fears of Japanese invasion along the Pacific Coast and Nazi invasion. So too there was a clash of visions between LaGuardia and Eleanor Roosevelt. The mayor argued that the OCD's focus had to be on preparing the country against German and Japanese attack, including conducting blackout drills, preparing evacuation plans, coordinating emergency medical teams, and protecting industrial plants and transportation centers. The First Lady believed the OCD should also promote social justice for African Americans and women and raise civilian morale. Their clashes frustrated FDR, who pressured them both to resign in 1942, and led to the appointment of James Landis, commissioner of the SEC, who created a semi-military operation that involved grassroots citizen mobilization, including planting Victory Gardens and building the Civil Air Patrol. It was the largest volunteer program in World War II America."--Provided by publisher.

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.

In Young Mr. Roosevelt Stanley Weintraub evokes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's political and wartime beginnings. An unpromising patrician playboy appointed assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913, Roosevelt learned quickly and rose to national visibility in World War I. Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1920, he lost the election but not his ambitions. While his stature was rising, his testy marriage to his cousin Eleanor was fraying amid scandal quietly covered up. Ever indomitable, even polio a year later would not suppress his inevitable ascent. Against the backdrop of a reluctant America's entry into a world war and FDR's hawkish build-up of a modern navy, Washington's gossip-ridden society, and the nation's surging economy, Weintraub summons up the early influences on the young and enterprising nephew of his predecessor, “Uncle Ted.”

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - "A model presidential biography... Now, at last, we have a biography that is right for the man" - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World One of today’s premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this superlative volume, Jean Edward Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to provide an engrossing narrative of one of America’s greatest presidents. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt’ s restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life. Smith recounts FDR’s battles with polio and physical disability, and how these experiences helped forge the resolve that FDR used to surmount the economic turmoil of the Great Depression and the wartime threat of totalitarianism. Here also is FDR’s private life depicted with unprecedented candor and nuance, with close attention paid to the four women who molded his personality and helped to inform his worldview: His mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, formidable yet ever supportive and tender; his wife, Eleanor, whose counsel and affection were instrumental to FDR’s public and individual achievements; Lucy Mercer, the great romantic love of FDR’s life; and Missy LeHand, FDR’s longtime secretary, companion, and confidante, whose adoration of her boss was practically limitless. Smith also tackles head-on and in-depth the numerous failures and miscues of Roosevelt’ s public career, including his disastrous attempt to reconstruct the Judiciary; the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans; and Roosevelt’s occasionally self-defeating Executive overreach. Additionally, Smith offers a sensitive and balanced assessment of Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust, noting its breakthroughs and shortcomings. Summing up Roosevelt’s legacy, Jean Smith declares that FDR, more than any other individual, changed the relationship between the American people and their government. It was Roosevelt who revolutionized the art of campaigning and used the burgeoning mass media to garner public support and allay fears. But more important, Smith gives us the clearest picture yet of how this quintessential Knickerbocker aristocrat, a man who never had to depend on a paycheck, became the common man’s president. The result is a powerful account that adds fresh perspectives and draws profound conclusions about a man whose story is widely known but far less well understood. Written for the general reader and scholars alike, FDR is a stunning biography in every way worthy of its subject.