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FDR #2
FDR: The New York Years 1928-1933
The War President opens as Roosevelt has been re-elected to a third term and the United States is drifting toward a war that has already engulfed Europe. Roosevelt, as commander in chief, statesman, and politician, must navigate a delicate balance between helping those in Europe--while remaining mindful of the forces of isolation both in the Congress and the country--and protecting the gains of the New Deal, upon which he has spent so much of his prestige and power.
Kenneth S. Davis draws vivid depictions of the lives, characters, and temperaments of the military and political personalities so paramount to the history of the Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle, and Hitler; Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, and MacArthur; Admiral Darlan, Chiang Kai-shek, Charles Lindbergh, William Allen White, Joseph Kennedy, Averell Harriman, Harry Tru-man, Robert Murphy, Sidney Hillman, William Knud-sen, Cordell Hull, Henry Morgenthau, Henry Stimson, A. Philip Randolph, Wendell Willkie, and Henry Wallace.
The portrait of Henry Hopkins, who interacted with many of these personalities on behalf of Roosevelt, is woven into this history as the complex, interconnected relationship it was. Hopkins burnished the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt and eased the way for their interactions with Stalin.
Another set of characters central to Roosevelt's life and finely drawn by the author includes Eleanor Roo-sevelt, Sara Roosevelt, Missy LeHand, Grace Tully, Princess Martha of Norway, and Daisy Suckley.
Integral to this history as well are the Argentina Conference, the Atlantic Charter and the beginnings of the United Nations, the Moscow Conference, lend-lease, the story of the building of the atomic bomb, Hitler's Final Solution and how Roosevelt and the State Department reacted to it, Pearl Harbor and war with Japan, the planning of Torch, and the murder of Admiral Darlan. All these stories intersect with the economic and social problems facing Roosevelt at home as the United States mobilizes for war.
The lessons and concerns of 1940-1943 as dissected in this book are still relevant to the problems and concerns of our own time. A recurrent theme is Do people control technology, or does technology control people?
Kenneth Davis had the rare gift of writing history that reads with the immediacy of a novel; and though the outcome of this history is well known, the events and people depicted here keep the reader focused on an enthralling suspense story.
Kenneth S. Davis draws vivid depictions of the lives, characters, and temperaments of the military and political personalities so paramount to the history of the Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle, and Hitler; Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, and MacArthur; Admiral Darlan, Chiang Kai-shek, Charles Lindbergh, William Allen White, Joseph Kennedy, Averell Harriman, Harry Tru-man, Robert Murphy, Sidney Hillman, William Knud-sen, Cordell Hull, Henry Morgenthau, Henry Stimson, A. Philip Randolph, Wendell Willkie, and Henry Wallace.
The portrait of Henry Hopkins, who interacted with many of these personalities on behalf of Roosevelt, is woven into this history as the complex, interconnected relationship it was. Hopkins burnished the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt and eased the way for their interactions with Stalin.
Another set of characters central to Roosevelt's life and finely drawn by the author includes Eleanor Roo-sevelt, Sara Roosevelt, Missy LeHand, Grace Tully, Princess Martha of Norway, and Daisy Suckley.
Integral to this history as well are the Argentina Conference, the Atlantic Charter and the beginnings of the United Nations, the Moscow Conference, lend-lease, the story of the building of the atomic bomb, Hitler's Final Solution and how Roosevelt and the State Department reacted to it, Pearl Harbor and war with Japan, the planning of Torch, and the murder of Admiral Darlan. All these stories intersect with the economic and social problems facing Roosevelt at home as the United States mobilizes for war.
The lessons and concerns of 1940-1943 as dissected in this book are still relevant to the problems and concerns of our own time. A recurrent theme is Do people control technology, or does technology control people?
Kenneth Davis had the rare gift of writing history that reads with the immediacy of a novel; and though the outcome of this history is well known, the events and people depicted here keep the reader focused on an enthralling suspense story.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 1985
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 29, 2017
Kenneth Davis has a problem with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's not the problem you might expect. This is not a book about a betrayer of the capitalist system. In fact, it's a book about a politician that failed to betray the capitalist system, and that gets Davis's ire. Basically, the author is upset that Roosevelt was not Norman Thomas, the socialist presidential candidate of 1932. Therefore Davis shoehorns Thomas oddly into the narrative as a kind of Greek chorus, preaching to Roosevelt (even though the two hardly talked) that the one true path to national happiness was socialism.
Whatever one thinks about this odd and entirely unnecessary politicizing, the meat of the book is a worthy addition to the FDR oeuvre. It deftly psychologizes a man who was both a carefree aristocrat and a shrewd politician, a temporizer who thought his every move bespoke God's hidden destiny, a man who everyone liked but no one seemed to really understand. He was an amazing, deft, open, yet complicated figure, and much of that comes through here, in a narration of the essential years where FDR ran New York state and simultaneously campaigned for the presidency (even when he pretended he had no interest).
Of course, Roosevelt never really ran New York State, because he faced a Republican legislature during his time in office that had little desire to try out his new schemes. They did agree with Roosevelt's one pet project, a constitutional bond issue to plant millions of acres of trees in New York. This was an odd issue to focus on in the midst of a Great Depression, since it could only employ a few hundred people a year, but for Roosevelt, the gentleman tree farmer, he was merely bringing the glories of his Hyde Park home to the state at large. More consequentially, the Governor faced two major battles. The first was his attempt to form a New York Power Authority to provide for the public production of electricity on the St. Lawrence River. Although the former Republican speaker of the state House, W. Kingsland Macy, became chair of a potentially competing J.P. Morgan-backed power company, Roosevelt got the legislature to create a weak form of his authority. Still, nothing had been done by the time he left office. The second struggle was how to face, or avoid, the never-ending corruption scandals that emerged from New York City's corrupt Tammany Hall administration. He wavered on appointing special prosecutors to cases of bribed magistrates and officials, and only pushed an investigation into Mayor Jimmy Walker after he had received the Democratic presidential nomination in June 1932, after which Walker left of his own accord. In both cases Roosevelt played his cards close to his chest, and came out as the nominal victor, although with little real result.
Much of the book is a well-wrought description of the formation of Roosevelt's campaign, composed of Jim Farley, Ed Flynn, Louis Howe, and his wife's "Women's Auxiliary," and his "Brains Trust," composed of Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle. Roosevelt always seemed to have a plan to win first the nomination and then the presidency, and he gathered a diverse group of people around him who were willing to tell him what worked and what didn't to accomplish the goal, even if they didn't agree with Roosevelt himself. Yet none of his advisors knew what Roosevelt's real plan was, or the real policy goals behind it, even after he had won the prize he struggled for all of his life. As usual Roosevelt remained a mystery. This book only deepened it.
Whatever one thinks about this odd and entirely unnecessary politicizing, the meat of the book is a worthy addition to the FDR oeuvre. It deftly psychologizes a man who was both a carefree aristocrat and a shrewd politician, a temporizer who thought his every move bespoke God's hidden destiny, a man who everyone liked but no one seemed to really understand. He was an amazing, deft, open, yet complicated figure, and much of that comes through here, in a narration of the essential years where FDR ran New York state and simultaneously campaigned for the presidency (even when he pretended he had no interest).
Of course, Roosevelt never really ran New York State, because he faced a Republican legislature during his time in office that had little desire to try out his new schemes. They did agree with Roosevelt's one pet project, a constitutional bond issue to plant millions of acres of trees in New York. This was an odd issue to focus on in the midst of a Great Depression, since it could only employ a few hundred people a year, but for Roosevelt, the gentleman tree farmer, he was merely bringing the glories of his Hyde Park home to the state at large. More consequentially, the Governor faced two major battles. The first was his attempt to form a New York Power Authority to provide for the public production of electricity on the St. Lawrence River. Although the former Republican speaker of the state House, W. Kingsland Macy, became chair of a potentially competing J.P. Morgan-backed power company, Roosevelt got the legislature to create a weak form of his authority. Still, nothing had been done by the time he left office. The second struggle was how to face, or avoid, the never-ending corruption scandals that emerged from New York City's corrupt Tammany Hall administration. He wavered on appointing special prosecutors to cases of bribed magistrates and officials, and only pushed an investigation into Mayor Jimmy Walker after he had received the Democratic presidential nomination in June 1932, after which Walker left of his own accord. In both cases Roosevelt played his cards close to his chest, and came out as the nominal victor, although with little real result.
Much of the book is a well-wrought description of the formation of Roosevelt's campaign, composed of Jim Farley, Ed Flynn, Louis Howe, and his wife's "Women's Auxiliary," and his "Brains Trust," composed of Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle. Roosevelt always seemed to have a plan to win first the nomination and then the presidency, and he gathered a diverse group of people around him who were willing to tell him what worked and what didn't to accomplish the goal, even if they didn't agree with Roosevelt himself. Yet none of his advisors knew what Roosevelt's real plan was, or the real policy goals behind it, even after he had won the prize he struggled for all of his life. As usual Roosevelt remained a mystery. This book only deepened it.
June 14, 2017
I am particularly interested in American history from 1929-1945, so this book fit right into my interests. It was loaded with information and I found it a valuable book to have in my library.
The book had passages that flowed wonderfully, but on the other hand there were sections that were so tedious I almost put the book up. It took me two months to read this book. The other point that bothered me was an incident of antisemitism on the part of the author that I considered offensive.
The book had passages that flowed wonderfully, but on the other hand there were sections that were so tedious I almost put the book up. It took me two months to read this book. The other point that bothered me was an incident of antisemitism on the part of the author that I considered offensive.
November 6, 2024
Overall good, but I found myself wanting to skip to Roosevelt’s run for the presidency. At some point the legislative process between Roosevelt as governor and the state legislature became a little dry.
June 19, 2021
Good bio
August 11, 2011
Volume 2. Unbelievably detailed account of FDRs four years as governor and the first run for the White House.
June 19, 2021
Well dine
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews