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Summary
Summary
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and NPR
"We come to see in FDR the magisterial, central figure in the greatest and richest political tapestry of our nation's entire history" --Nigel Hamilton, Boston Globe
"Meticulously researched and authoritative" --Douglas Brinkley, The Washington Post
"A workmanlike addition to the literature on Roosevelt." --David Nasaw, The New York Times
"Dallek offers an FDR relevant to our sharply divided nation" --Michael Kazin
"Will rank among the standard biographies of its subject" -- Publishers Weekly
A one-volume biography of Roosevelt by the #1 New York Times bestselling biographer of JFK, focusing on his career as an incomparable politician, uniter, and deal maker
In an era of such great national divisiveness, there could be no more timely biography of one of our greatest presidents than one that focuses on his unparalleled political ability as a uniter and consensus maker. Robert Dallek's Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions that have attracted all his biographers: how did a man who came from so privileged a background become the greatest presidential champion of the country's needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster revolutionary changes in the country's economic and social institutions? How did Roosevelt work such a profound change in the country's foreign relations?
For FDR, politics was a far more interesting and fulfilling pursuit than the management of family fortunes or the indulgence of personal pleasure, and by the time he became president, he had commanded the love and affection of millions of people. While all Roosevelt's biographers agree that the onset of polio at the age of thirty-nine endowed him with a much greater sense of humanity, Dallek sees the affliction as an insufficient explanation for his transformation into a masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms, initiate landmark reforms that changed the American industrial system, and transform an isolationist country into an international superpower.
Dallek attributes FDR's success to two remarkable political insights. First, unlike any other president, he understood that effectiveness in the American political system depended on building a national consensus and commanding stable long-term popular support. Second, he made the presidency the central, most influential institution in modern America's political system. In addressing the country's international and domestic problems, Roosevelt recognized the vital importance of remaining closely attentive to the full range of public sentiment around policy-making decisions--perhaps FDR's most enduring lesson in effective leadership.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dallek (Camelot's Court), an acclaimed biographer of earlier American presidents, covers nearly every aspect of F.D.R.'s life in a characteristically adroit work that is balanced in coverage and prudent in assessment. While Dallek does not add in any major way to existing knowledge of F.D.R., his emphasis falls on the two great crises of F.D.R.'s presidency-the Depression and WWII-and highlights F.D.R.'s emergence as a skillful politician. Given the book's paucity of attention to issues regarding women, people of color, the environment, and civil and human rights, it's not quite the timely work it is being framed as. When those issues arise it's within chronological coverage of the New Deal and war. Readers may tire from the book's relentless parade of declarative statements, though few will challenge Dallek's characterization of Roosevelt as "an instinctively brilliant politician" and all will benefit from Dallek's principal addition to earlier works on F.D.R.: the convincing argument that as early as May 1943 F.D.R. was showing signs of the illness that would kill him. The result is a comprehensive retelling of a major American life that will rank among the standard biographies of its subject. Agent: John W. Wright, John Wright Literary. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Dallek, among our leading presidential biographers (JFK, LBJ), now takes on the daunting task of providing a comprehensive one-volume biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He succeeds in presenting the abundance of information in a flowing and highly readable narrative, and he supports FDR's story with memorable sketches of the president's many associates Harry Hopkins and Louis Howe, among them his varied opponents, the foreign leaders who served opposite him (Dallek is particularly good on Churchill), and many others. Eleanor, too, is portrayed in full, complete with a notably honest account of her marriage to Franklin. Among this book's other strengths are the coverage of the isolationists who opposed America's entry into WWII, the lead-up to the cross-channel invasion, and FDR's paralysis, especially the manner in which he handled it and the ways in which it shaped him. His leadership skills and communication, including his use of radio, are also discussed intelligently. Dallek admires FDR's experimental temper even in the absence of a preconceived plan, say, for the New Deal. The book is drawn largely from secondary works (a notable exception being letters between FDR and his distant cousin Daisy, quotations from which enhance the personal dimension). It is the nature of biographies of this type to bypass the negative, but we are reminded that FDR's role regarding refugee Jews, the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the treatment of African Americans was less than noble. In all, a first-rate biography and a must-buy for most public-library history collections.--Levine, Mark Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
AMERICANS HAVE BEEN avid readers of presidential biographies since the birth of the nation. The first was written by Mason Weems, a traveling bookseller and preacher, and published in 1800, three years after George Washington left office. It was an immediate best seller. In the years to come, another 1,900 Washington biographies would be published. Since 1960, the number of presidential biographies has mushroomed: more than 2,200 of Abraham Lincoln, almost 1,200 of John F. Kennedy, 800 of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Of them all, it is perhaps Roosevelt who has been best served by his biographers, though the task of telling his life story has never been an easy one. He occupied office too long, accomplished too much, failed too often and was confronted by not only the greatest domestic crisis since the Civil War, but also the greatest foreign crisis since the Revolution. Born to wealth, with a cousin in the White House while he was at Harvard, Roosevelt was a natural politician: physically attractive, intellectually quick and witty, with a fine speaking voice, upright posture, charisma and charm. At 28, he was elected to the New York State Senate; at 31, appointed assistant secretary of the Navy; at 38, nominated by the Democratic Party for the vice presidency. A year later, having contracted polio, he lost the use of his legs, forever. He could not hide his disability, but he could and did shield its severity and effects from the public and, perhaps, from himself. He was elected governor of New York in 1928, re-elected in 1930. He would win election to the presidency in 1932 and re-election in 1936,1940 and 1944. Such are the outlines of the public life. But what of the private? His marriage was a disaster. In September 1918, Eleanor, unpacking his luggage after a trip abroad, discovered love letters from Lucy Mercer, her social secretary. She offered Franklin a divorce, but did not demand one. The two would remain together - as political partners, but not as husband and wife. There would be several other women in his life, including Daisy Suckley, his cousin, closest companion and confidante during his years as president. At her death in 1991, at age 99, a trove of personal diaries and letters from Franklin were found under her bed. Until these materials were made available to researchers, the portrait that Roosevelt had cultivated during his life, one largely accepted by his biographers, was of a man gilded with optimism, unflappable, self-composed, self-confident. His letters to Daisy - and her diary entries - portray someone quite different: a man tired and weary, disheartened by the virulence of his critics, dismayed by the enormousness of the challenges he faced, unsure of his capacities to bear the burdens of office. How to make sense of this life? How does one connect the dots, find the through-line, locate the man beneath the carefully constructed public persona? Several of his greatest biographers set out to tell the full story, but were nearly overcome by the immensity of the task. Frank Freidel completed five volumes, taking the story up to 1933. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. finished three volumes, but only got as far as the 1936 re-election. James MacGregor Burns completed the first of his volumes in 1956, but it took him until 1970 to publish the second. Kenneth Davis died in 1999 with four of his five volumes in print; the last would be published in 2000. Either because publishers demand it or authors prefer it, recent biographers have tried to squeeze the story into one extended volume. Robert Dallek, the author of an earlier book on Roosevelt's foreign policy and several presidential biographies, is the latest to take this route. There are many strengths to "Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life." Dallek fully incorporates into his narrative Roosevelt's complicated, conflicted relationship with the several women in his life and is especially good on the role Eleanor played, as goad and political adviser. He also makes it clear, in a way other biographers do not, that almost from the moment he entered office, Roosevelt set out to educate the nation to the fact that the United States was threatened not only by economic depression at home, but also by fascist aggressions abroad. He did not counsel war, but neither did he counsel isolation from the world beyond our shores. "The maintenance of international peace is a matter in which we are deeply and unselfishly concerned," he told Congress as early as January 1935, in his State of the Union address. Dallek reminds us that Roosevelt took office knowing full well that while as president he bore ultimate responsibility for the nation, he did so with limited powers. Congress was in control of foreign policy and the Supreme Court could and would overturn domestic policies it considered unconstitutional. Only after his enormous secONE OF THE PERKS of being a reader of history is time travel. Pick up a presidential biography and, for an hour or so, you can leave the present behind and enjoy an almost visceral comfort in visiting another world. The catch is that you remain tethered to the present, incapable of looking at the past without comparing it to the present. Reading a Roosevelt biography today, one is struck head-on by the deadly seriousness, the moral purpose with which Franklin Roosevelt prepared for and assumed the office of president of the United States. His respect for the dignity of the presidency was unwavering through his 12 years and one month in the White House. You can hear it in his fireside addresses and radio talks, read it in his formal speeches to Congress and the nation, watch it in the newsreel clips. He stands near ramrod straight, gripping the podium. He speaks plainly, but never less than eloquently. Every word is carefully chosen, articulated with force and precision, but never snidely, sarcastically or dismissively, and never with rancor or condescension. His purpose was not to stir up his supporters - though he managed to do so - but to educate the larger public, friends and foes, to his concerns, which he hoped would become their concerns. Dallek's is a workmanlike addition to the literature on Roosevelt and covers all the bases. There is, regrettably, little to distinguish it from the many excellent biographies that came before it and on which it draws. The prose is clean, but flat, with little sparkle or literary grace. There are no new analytic thrusts or parries, no new sources or imaginative reinterpretations of old ones. Those who have read other Roosevelt biographies will learn little from this one. Still, this is a story worth telling, again and again. And there is much to be gained, at this moment in our history, from having one more Roosevelt biography in our electronic devices and on our bookstore and library shelves. ? ond-term landslide victory in 1936, when he was worried and frightened that constraints on his executive powers would hinder, if not block, his efforts to right the economy and protect international peace, did Roosevelt uncharacteristically, almost perversely, attempt to alter the balance of powers by packing the Supreme Court with his appointees and purging his Democratic majority of incumbents, mostly Southerners, who opposed his policies. Both initiatives failed - and failed badly, leaving him with a diminished capacity to extend the New Deal or intervene to deter German, Italian and Japanese aggressions. After Eleanor learned of Franklins affair, she would remain his partner, but not his wife.
Choice Review
Nearly 40 years ago, preeminent presidential scholar and biographer Dallek first wrote about the nation's 32nd president in Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy (1979). His fascination and respect for the political longevity of FDR's career and the sheer weight of his political accomplishments frame the narrative of this new book. From Roosevelt's first election as an undergraduate at Harvard (a losing effort) through his second reelection campaign in 1944, Dallek regards FDR's drive and political instincts as nothing short of brilliant. He credits FDR for his extraordinary leadership as a campaigner in 1932 and then as the ambitious launcher of the New Deal. Roosevelt's ability to steer public opinion in 1940 when it came time to oppose Hitler and his allies also garners praise. But Dallek also doles out equal shares of criticism, holding Roosevelt accountable for his failure to support anti-lynching legislation (and civil rights), for lending support to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, and for failing to be more proactive about assisting victims of the Holocaust. The fact that Dallek writes beautifully will only be seen as a bonus when reading this extraordinary book. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Bob Miller, University of Cincinnati-Clermont
Guardian Review
Donald Trumps weaknesses implicitly come to the fore as a master of the presidential biography captures Roosevelts compassion and sense of solidarity Had it not been for last years election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, Robert Dallek s new biography of Franklin D Roosevelt might have simply been a very good book. Given Trump, it feels like an essential one. Dallek, who has previously written biographies of John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson, here captures a full life in a single volume with brisk prose. We see FDRs rise, helped by his wife, Eleanor, within the Democratic party; his sudden contraction of polio, which left him paralysed from the waist down; his election, first as governor of New York and then president of the United States; his New Deal response to the Great Depression; and his leadership in the second world war. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were patrician bohemians, not radicals but liberal enough to include in their circle strong-willed eccentrics the hyperactive gambler Harry Hopkins, or the cigar-smoking, slacks-wearing journalist Lorena Hickok committed to social reform. Hopkins, among the most leftwing of FDRs brain trust, made the Works Project Administration a success and organised FDRs vast logistical wartime bureaucracy. Hickok, who as an investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration pushed the Roosevelts to attend to labour and civil rights issues, had become Eleanors most intimate emotional, and no doubt sexual, companion. Dallek shows how Old Dutch family wealth, noblesse oblige, tolerance, a debilitating disease, and an interest in modernist culture combined to create in FDR an instinctively brilliant politician. The author says he wrote his account to remind a younger generation with limited knowledge of American history, of what great political leadership looks like. He only mentions Trump once, but FDRs strengths his ability to compromise, his regulatory programme and awareness of the environment, his diplomacy and care for social well-being implicitly highlight Trumps weaknesses. Roosevelt, one of his contemporaries remarked, never gave the impression he was tired or bored, nor did he often show irritation. Trump has an attention span as long as a tweet and the impulses of a sugar-addled toddler. Polio robbed Roosevelt of the ability to walk, an open secret that he occasionally used to establish a bond with voters. Imagine where I might have been without my private resources to rehabilitate myself? he once asked. Here, Roosevelt was inviting voters to identify with him not to perpetuate a fantasy that they, too, might become millionaires, but rather as a way of generating human solidarity, a shared sense of how we all have times when we need help. Dallek emphasises FDRs nonideological nature, his willingness to try, and err, and try again. In so doing, he made some policy decisions that, in the long run, helped give rise to Trumpism. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, in the depths of the depression, when faith among US citizens in the virtues of the laissez-faire state was at an all-time low. Promising action, and action now, he easily could have nationalised the banks. Instead he stabilised and regulated them, which Dallek says restored confidence. It also left finance free to regather its strength as a bastion of private power, which it used, starting in the 1970s, to spearhead the nations rapid deindustrialisation. In so doing, it laid the foundation for todays low-wage unequal economy, which produces, in addition to anxiety and desperation, a steady stream of angry voters. Roosevelt likewise wasted political capital and government resources reconstructing a collapsed agricultural sector, not so much saving small farms as creating a kind of agro-industrial corporatism. FDR, Dallek writes, should have focused on the urban industrial centers as the mainstay of any revival. Roosevelts modest, meagerly funded and short-lived Federal Writers Project stimulated a vibrant cultural modernism, employing authors such as Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow and artists such as Jackson Pollock. But for more than 80 years, New Deal federal programmes have pumped trillions of dollars into an ever smaller number of poorly paying agricultural corporations in a handful of mostly reactionary states, including Texas and Arizona, todays base of Trumpism. Dallek doesnt mention it, but Roosevelt also missed a chance to include a programme of national health care in his signature social security legislation, which, had it been included, would have narrowed the opportunities for the right to discredit the welfare state. And to appease southern Democratic party conservatives, he exempted agricultural workers, many of them African-Americans, from New Deal protections, including the right to organise labour unions. If the south had been able to unionise, the Dixiecrat backlash, which first targeted the civil rights movement but went on to defeat most of the New Deal, might have been less effective. Dallek is a master of the genre of presidential biography, but how can one continue being a Rembrandt, detailing the light and shadow of golden age captains, after the arrival of the grotesque, when political culture has become a carnival? The genre, a moneymaker for big publishing houses during gift-giving seasons, provides important ideological support for American exceptionalism. Biographers generally treat their subjects crimes and cruelties Thomas Jeffersons rape, Andrew Jacksons genocide, or JFKs sexual assault of a teenage White House intern as personal foibles. In FDRs case, Dallek criticises the second world war internment of Japanese-Americans, his alliance with southern segregationists and refusal to come to the aid of Germanys Jews. He might also have mentioned Roosevelts deportation of millions of undocumented Mexican migrant workers. In keeping with the genres formula, Dallek balances these wrongs against FDRs many rights and gives him credit. But Trump scrambles the formula. He represents one of two possibilities: he is either presiding over a wholly un-American movement that has captured the institutions of government; or he is the realisation, the manifest destiny, of an entirely American form of racism. Either way, future biographers will have a hard time describing Trumps vices such as his compulsion to humiliate successful African-Americans, demonise Mexicans and migrants and to coddle Nazis as personal failings, and balance them against the nations virtues. Short of a complete revision of the genre into a branch of Marxism, my sense is that future presidential biographers will write with ever more hagiographic urgency, blurring whatever minimal distinctions mainstream historians made between good presidents such as FDR and catastrophic ones, such as George W Bush. Still, Trumps brutalism limits the ability of future presidential biographers to present less flattering details as simply part of building a character portrait. Oh, Eleanor, FDR rebuked his wife, after she joined an interview with Walter Lippmann, Shut up. You never understand these things anyway. Uncharacteristic, Dallek writes. Blunt, a previous biographer said of this encounter. Trumpian may well be the word future presidential biographers use to describe such scenes. - Greg Grandin.
Library Journal Review
Presidential historian Dallek follows up his well-received An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 with his third and most comprehensive work on Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) to date. After briefly covering Roosevelt's college years and early political career, the book chronologically recounts the politician's greatest challenges, including trying presidential elections and the years leading up to and during World War II. Dallek's familiarity with his subject and deep understanding of American history and context shines in his clear and engaging prose. The author keeps his focus almost entirely on Roosevelt's political life. For example, a chapter on the leader's struggles with polio is also cast in a political light. There is less information on his life with wife Eleanor and his extended family. Although lengthy, the narrative manages to move quickly through a dense subject; readers will gain a solid sense of Roosevelt's political mind and an inspiring appreciation of his mighty character. VERDICT This highly recommended, expertly crafted book will please a variety of readers, especially those interested in biographies as well as presidential, military, and American history.-Benjamin Brudner, Curry Coll. Lib., Milton, MA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.