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His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt (2016)

by Joseph Lelyveld

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1243218,252 (4.33)3
"Untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax"--Dust jacket flap. "'By far the most enigmatic leading figure' of World War II. That's how the British military historian John Keegan described Franklin D. Roosevelt, who frequently left his contemporaries guessing, never more so than at the end of his life. Here, in an insightful account, a prizewinning author and journalist untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax. The story has been told piecemeal but never like this, with a close focus on Roosevelt himself and his hopes for a stable international order after the war, and how these led him into a prolonged courtship of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, involving secret, arduous journeys to Tehran and the Crimea. In between, as the war entered its final phase, came the thunderbolt of a dire medical diagnosis, raising urgent questions about the ability of the longest-serving president to stand for a fourth term at a time when he had little choice. Neither his family nor top figures in his administration were informed of his diagnosis, let alone the public or his closest ally, Winston Churchill. With D-Day looming, Roosevelt took a month off on a plantation in the South where he was examined daily by a navy cardiologist, then waited two more months before finally announcing, on the eve of his party's convention, that he'd be a candidate. A political grand master still, he manipulated the selection of a new running mate, with an eye to a possible succession, displaying some of his old vigor and wit in a winning campaign. With precision and compassion, Joseph Lelyveld examines the choices Roosevelt faced, shining new light on his state of mind, preoccupations, and motives, both as leader of the wartime alliance and in his personal life. Confronting his own mortality, Roosevelt operated in the belief that he had a duty to see the war through to the end, telling himself he could always resign if he found he couldn't carry on. Lelyveld delivers an incisive portrait of this deliberately inscrutable man, a consummate leader to the very last."--Dust jacket.… (more)
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This detailed account of the final months of Franklin Roosevelt's life, beginning with the Tehran Conference in the fall of 1943, is extraordinarily informative and a pleasure to read. The author is a fine stylist and provides not only a good overview of the 1944 election campaign (such as it was) and the diplomacy of WWII, but minute examination of FDR's health, psychology, postwar plans, manner of handling people and of governance, and personal relationships. The book is neither hagiography nor a Peglerian hatchet job; although the author sees through many of Roosevelt's techniques in handling people who were, or whom he needed to make, allies, and at times takes a dim view of them, almost all of the eyewitness accounts upon which he relies were members of his administration or family, and thus, at bottom, if frank, rarely if ever totally hostile. True, the book is lengthy, but I learned many new things and I was sorry to see it end. ( )
  Big_Bang_Gorilla | May 6, 2018 |
This is an exciting and fact filled account of Roosevelt's final year. His health declined, but he struggled to continue on for the sake of the war effort and the future that he envisioned for a post-war world. I found his relationships with Churchill and Stalin at this time to be fascinating. Eleanor is largely missing from this account so I was happy to have recently read the second volume of Blanche Weisen Cook's biography of Eleanor. ( )
  gbelik | Jan 8, 2018 |
Worth the read.
  revliz | Jul 10, 2017 |
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Epigraph
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times he rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath.
  - W.B. Yeats
Dedication
In memory of Ed Lelyveld, a traveling salesman, who days after FDR'S death gave his grandson, just turned eight, a little book for juvenile readers on the first thirty-two presidents.
First words
(Prologue) With each passing day, he extended his record as the longest-serving president in American history.
Joseph Stalin may have been the first person with whom Franklin Roosevelt openly discussed the likelihood that he might have to seek a fourth term.
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"Untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax"--Dust jacket flap. "'By far the most enigmatic leading figure' of World War II. That's how the British military historian John Keegan described Franklin D. Roosevelt, who frequently left his contemporaries guessing, never more so than at the end of his life. Here, in an insightful account, a prizewinning author and journalist untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax. The story has been told piecemeal but never like this, with a close focus on Roosevelt himself and his hopes for a stable international order after the war, and how these led him into a prolonged courtship of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, involving secret, arduous journeys to Tehran and the Crimea. In between, as the war entered its final phase, came the thunderbolt of a dire medical diagnosis, raising urgent questions about the ability of the longest-serving president to stand for a fourth term at a time when he had little choice. Neither his family nor top figures in his administration were informed of his diagnosis, let alone the public or his closest ally, Winston Churchill. With D-Day looming, Roosevelt took a month off on a plantation in the South where he was examined daily by a navy cardiologist, then waited two more months before finally announcing, on the eve of his party's convention, that he'd be a candidate. A political grand master still, he manipulated the selection of a new running mate, with an eye to a possible succession, displaying some of his old vigor and wit in a winning campaign. With precision and compassion, Joseph Lelyveld examines the choices Roosevelt faced, shining new light on his state of mind, preoccupations, and motives, both as leader of the wartime alliance and in his personal life. Confronting his own mortality, Roosevelt operated in the belief that he had a duty to see the war through to the end, telling himself he could always resign if he found he couldn't carry on. Lelyveld delivers an incisive portrait of this deliberately inscrutable man, a consummate leader to the very last."--Dust jacket.

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