Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom

This book is a one-volume beast - as such a titanic and misconstrued (both positively and negatively) figure in American history deserves.

He is rightly a sphinx, and this is an excellent one-volume study which clears up much of the history concerning the time, revealing his deft political maneuvering, the economic programs which sometimes flopped, but the majority of which were astounding successes and still in use today (e.g. massive electricity projects, including the Hoover Dam), and revitalized the American economy without resorting to the dangerous extremes of totalitarianism, and his brilliant wartime successes and excellent choice of generals.

His faults are discussed in equal measure, giving time to his emotional insensitivity to show more Eleanor, his vaguely dictatorial plan to 'pack' the Supreme Court, and the Japanese internment.

This is an astonishing book, and one, if I may humbly offer, should be read more often in these uncertain times. show less

3870. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, by Conrad Black ( read 2 Apr 2004) With only a few exceptions my aim to read a biography of each US president has been reached, but while I have read numerous partial biographies of FDR (Geoffrey Ward's volumes on his early life, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt 1882-1905 [read 15 Oct 1993] and A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt [read 12 Sept 1995] being some of the best) I have not till now read a complete biography of him. There are multi-volume works by Kenneth Davis and by Frank Friedel, but I was not sure which to read so I have read neither. This work by Conrad Black, called a conservative Canadian publisher and published just last year show more seemed to be worth while, and I read it with a lot of enjoyment and appreciation. He obviously says some unapproving things about FDR--the jacket has blurbs on it by George Will, Bill Buckley, Jr., and Henry Kissinger--but on the big important overall issues the book was satisfactory to one who grew up in a home which overall looked on FDR with much favor. The author did not do original research but his 25-page bibliography shows he has mined the secondary sources with assiduity. A good book to read. show less

Fascinating book on one of America's top five Presidents.