|
| FDR | 
 enlarge | Author: Jean Edward Smith
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
Buy New: $12.34
You Save: $7.66 (38%)
New (10) Used (6) from $12.31
Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 562
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 880
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 2.1
ISBN: 0812970497
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.917092
EAN: 9780812970494
ASIN: 0812970497
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
 The most readable book on our greatest president..... May 20, 2007
77 out of 84 found this review helpful
The debate will rage on forever - who is America's greatest president. One saved the union, the other saved it again, and also saved the world. This is the most readable, enjoyable and knowledgeable book on our thirty-second president. You will learn new things (not an easy thing to do in a FDR biography), come to know and appreciate the life and times of this great American and will not be able to put the book down. The book reads like no other biography - in some ways it feels like you are reading the mythical "great American novel". FDR was bigger than life and gave a better life to all Americans. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a better understanding of who he was and how he accomplished all that he did. My life is better for reading it,
Likely to be the standard reference on FDR for years to come May 30, 2007
50 out of 55 found this review helpful
Jean Edward Smith's FDR will likely become the standard reference biography on the former president given the rare combination of easy accessibility and comprehensive research about one of the most complicated figures in American history. While the one volume format may limit the depth of some topics like Yalta, the overall effect is to create a rare hybrid: something that is both very readable and very deeply referenced. Five stars.
As Smith notes in the foreword, there is a ridiculous volume of literature on FDR, his policies, his lieutenants, and his wife. Smith's gift is that he absorbs the massive amount of scholarship, does an impressive amount of primary source research - some of which even after all the preceding authors is still quite original - and then unlike most academics translates it into concepts even neophytes can understand. While shelves are filled with volumes detailing programs of the New Deal, Smith both explains the programs thoroughly and then adds on all the behind the scenes deal-making and politics, yet does so in a masterly crafted 55 pages.
This isn't to say that Smith hasn't done his homework. In some places he adds significantly to the existing literature. For instance, Roosevelt's stint as Assistant Secretary of the Navy is probably better explored than any other of his biographers. The results are interesting: FDR's Navy Secretary boss, Josephus Daniels, was not the pushover that many historians argue, FDR contributed a surprising amount to the war effort (it was FDR, not Daniels, that championed the Naval Reserve), and Smith strongly supports an argument that his administrative experience was not just a political education in learning how to deal with Congress but also provided the background to succeed as commander-in-chief during World War II. Some of this is original research, other parts are synthesizing a bunch of underutilized biographies, but in total it works nicely.
Smith is an unabashed admirer of Roosevelt - his parents' farm was electrified by the rural projects - but objectively criticizes policy and people in a distinctly non-partisan manner. Woodrow Wilson is torn to shreds as a bungling holier-than-thou racist zealot, and when FDR makes similarly bad mistakes Smith calls him to task. Smith spends a good deal of time attacking FDR's hubris in packing the Supreme Court and attempting to purge the party of conservatives. Those have been covered before by others, but he successful argues there is no little irony how the former crippled his legislative agenda and the latter, if successful, would have lead to disastrous consequences on later foreign policy votes. Other errors like the Japanese detention order and screwing up postwar Europe by largely excluding the State department from policy decisions because of a spat between him and Cordell Hull provide balance. Conspiracy theorists aren't going to like how he tramples the Pearl Harbor myths - Dean Acheson's role in scuttling FDR's final attempt towards defusing things is noteworthy - but the scholarship is there in the footnotes for those who want to look it up.
This is a biography that will likely be used as the starting point for most research on the subject matter for years to come. Smith is to be commended for showing that not all scholarly biographies have to break the back of the reader. 5 stars.
The definitive biography on Franklin Delano Roosevelt May 31, 2007
39 out of 41 found this review helpful
FDR, by Jean Edward Smith, proves that no highly significant historical figure or event is beyond a great writer's ability to improve a particular body of literature. Indeed FDR is a towering work of both writing and scholarship. Smith again proves he is one of our foremost biographers and captures, in a very evenhanded way, the very essence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, this writing is up there with David Herbert Donald's Lincoln. Both took on truly larger than life topics and did so with energy and vigor.
The footnoting in FDR is highly extensive and the curious reader will look at many of them and make notes to read on additional topics as Smith piques the interest of any with any significant interest in Roosevelt. He, like Lincoln, was the President in a time where it is difficult to imagine, even for his critics, another person assuming the role. Smith explains and documents almost all of FDR's life and gives very plausible reasons for his rather radical views at the time, especially for one with his Hudson River pedigree. He tackles his many physical challenges, his relationship with his peripatetic wife Eleanor (see Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time) , his affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford, his intimate relationship with Churchill (see Jon Meacham's Franklin and Winston) and his reliance on a cast of eclectic personal and political operatives over the years. All of his public years are well covered, perhaps even more so his early years in New York politics.
There is very little, if nothing to criticize about this book. One could make an argument that Smith tried too hard to keep it a readable 636 pages with and additional 221 pages of notes and an exhaustive bibliography. Maybe two volumes would have improved this work, but that is sheer conjecture. This book must be read by all with more than a passing interest in 20th Century American history. Simply sublime.
 Move along, nothing to see here May 22, 2008
26 out of 41 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I wanted more knowledge of how a successful presidency is achieved. Historians have consistently ranked FDR in third place among presidents, behind Washington and Lincoln. I also wanted updated research, and a modern writing style.
When I received the book, and saw conservative commentator George F. Will's praise on the dust jacket, I knew something was wrong.
It went downhill from Mr. Will's comment.
According to the book, Roosevelt rode in on his wealth and cousin Teddy's popularity. He was swept along by his political handlers.
The book concentrates on FDR's failures and glosses over his legacy. For example, it devotes many pages to the court packing attempt, and scant paragraphs to the WPA or TVA or Social Security (or to the entirety of the New Deal for that matter).
It discusses the minutia of his daily life, but provides no insight into the man. It discusses what time he got up in the morning (late) and what time was happy hour. Yet it gives no insight of how Roosevelt formed his political or social views, how he effectively worked with foe and friend to achieve his agenda, how he stabilized the financial institutions, and lifted America from the Great Depression.
If you're looking for such a book, move along, there's nothing here to see.
IT SHOULD WIN A PULITZER AT LEAST May 26, 2007
21 out of 29 found this review helpful
As a long-time student of the New Deal, I expected a popularized biography of Roosevelt, but was very pleasantly surprised. Smith is very even-handed, let's the warts on FDR's personality and conduct (court-packing, trying to defeat conservative Senators in 1938, he and Eleanor as among the worst parents ever) speak for themselves. His style is easy to follow and exceptionally well-written. He also is not afraid of writing about FDR's mistresses, Missy LeHand, his personal secretary, and Lucy Rutherford, and even the dismal state of FDR's personal bedroom at the White House (old money, you know), his refusal to fire ineffective cabinet officers, his inattention to details (shades of Reagan), his politically-savey but opportunistic twists and turns when dealing with difficult policy issues such as neutrality in 1939-1940, but FDR shines in Smith's hands as a courageous man, a brilliant and tough politician, a great communicator, and one of the most self-confident Presidents ever.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
