Roosevelt In Retrospect: A Profile in History

by John Gunther

Biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography

410 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

John Gunther was one of the best known and most admired journalists of his day, and his series of "Inside" books, starting with Inside Europe in 1936, were immensely popular profiles of the major world powers. One critic noted that it was Gunther's special gift to "unite the best qualities of the newspaperman and the historian." It was a gift that readers responded to enthusiastically. The "Inside" books sold 3,500,000 copies over a period of thirty years.

While publicly a bon vivant and modest celebrity, Gunther in his private life suffered disappointment and tragedy. He and Frances Fineman, whom he married in 1927, had a daughter who died four months after her birth in 1929. The Gunthers divorced in 1944. In 1947, their beloved son Johnny died after a long, heartbreaking fight with brain cancer. Gunther wrote his classic memoir Death Be Not Proud, published in 1949, to commemorate the courage and spirit of this extraordinary boy. Gunther remarried in 1948, and he and his second wife, Jane Perry Vandercook, adopted a son.

Reviews

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-I'm enjoying it, so there. Maybe I'll scan the cover for GoodReads. It was published in 1950-only five years after Roosevelt's death-and Gunther makes much of that fact by calling his work a "preliminary" to all the future studies of Roosevelt that he felt sure would follow.

4/27/09--finally finished this...kind of difficult for this 21st century girl to follow sometimes. Gunther mentions a lot of names of people who were probably familiar to politically-minded people in 1950, when the book was published, and he usually doesn't bother to explain who they are. I mean were. And he's SUCH a Roosevelt man that it's hard to know how balanced the author's portrait can possibly be. Of course, after reading David McCullough's Truman I added Harry to my list of guys that I would marry...

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My dear Mr. Gunther, the President never thinks!". Eleanor Roosevelt to John Gunther. Gunther had the virtue of having spoken with Roosevelt several times in the White House and sized him up as a great man. This is not a summary of the Roosevelt presidency, but an inside look at the man who unleashed a tornado in American politics. What was the source of his strength? Gunther agrees with Eleanor that FDR was a man of action who cared little for labels and even less for ideologies. "Experiment, experiment, the important thing is to take action". This does not mean Roosevelt was without vision. He correctly surmised the US could not keep out of the European war of 1939 but tread carefully in preparing the nation for an inevitable conflict with Nazi Germany. Gunther offers admiration and affection for a man who was basically unlovable but loved by millions, and hated by as many more.