Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History

A contemporary described Hopkins near the end of his career as looking like an ill fed old horse at the end of a long day, and this book helps you understand why. A highly cautionary tale for anyone who aspires to serve a chief executive.

434. Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, by Robert E. Sherwood (read 1 June 1952) (Pulitzer Biography prize for 1949) (Bancroft Prize in 1949) I started reading this book on May 22, 1952. On May 24 I said "An astonishingly wonderful book. It is like a saunter in ethereal dewy meadows in early morn: an experience appealing to the acuity of feeling that was mine in my youth. Sherwood, a devoted friend of both subjects, paints a very literate portrait which is to me an edification. His first chapters on Harry Hopkins' role as relief administrator, of course, deal with events of which my memory has no direct evidence. But when he takes up the development of the isolationist-interventionist issue, or the third term campaign, he deals show more with things of which I have independent recollection and hence it is pleasure intertwined with a joyous nostalgia to read his accounts thereof. The job that Sherwood does of humanizing Roosevelt is poignant, told as it is from the vi+-+-ewpoint of one who lived in the White House for a time. And Sherwood's adulation is such it only brings joyed acquiescence from me." On May 25 I said: "Surprisingly enough, much of the book is news to me. Brought home to me just how much we were working for and pitching our stakes on total defeat of Hitler in 1941. Our military leaders were in closest contact with top British sources, and after Russia was in the war we became much interested in her fight. But Roosevelt pursued a cautious course, not going nearly as far as interventionists wanted. Obviously FDR pursued his almost feeble course in his public actions because he knew the nation'd not be united in pursuit of any flagrant aims. As it was, I know I never thought at the time that his course was feeble. There is no doubt that Pearl Harbor took the farsighted Administration out of a real dilemma. FDR knew that we'd have to get into the war in order to achieve the goal so important to us: the destruction of Hitlerism. But this fact gives no basis to a holding that FDR deliberately failed to warn Pearl Harbor." On May 26 I said: "Read 1942 up to April part of book. They had full agreement on an invasion of Europe set at least a year before June 6, 1944, but what caused these plans to be abandoned I have not come to yet. The entire book is a good review of the history of that period, which I know of only from the day-by-day news I heard of at the time." I finished the book on June 1 and said: "The book served to refresh a lot of things that were dim in my mind. I think I shall have to read more on the whole business." show less