Pros: A superb one-volume biography of the pre-eminent figure of the 20th century.
Cons: A long book, not for the timid. The New Deal chapters can get tedious.
The Bottom Line: For anyone wanting to understand why FDR was elected president four times, this biography is remarkable, highly accessible, and very well written.
excremento's Full Review: Conrad Black - Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion...
A lot has happened since I wrote my last review. I'm in graduate school and my fourth daughter was born. One thing that hasn't changed is my love of books (never mind that I finished reading this book in Feb. of 2005).
Probably not too many people will read this review, but I was so impressed by this book that I felt I had to share my comments. MKP51 has already written an excellent, in-depth review of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom. I merely wish to comment on the aspects that I enjoyed the most.
When I first saw this book at Waldenbooks, I was struck by the sheer size of the tome. At 1280 pages (including notes and index; 1134 pages of text), this is a huge book. I really love to read books full of detail, rather than books that are overviews or otherwise introductory. Of course that size does have some drawbacks. It's not a book you'd want to pack around on a trip. I also became rather anxious to reach the end after spending many weeks with it.
If I had not seen this book at the store, I don't know that I ever would have been interested in reading it, or any book about Roosevelt. My political philosophy is directly opposite his...or so I thought. After reading it, I believe Roosevelt is not quite the liberal/socialist I might have assumed. In fact, when I told a friend that I was getting this book, he was quite surprised and referred to FDR as a socialist.
Anyone would have to say that Roosevelt did "liberalize" the United States. But given the economic and political upheaval of the '20s and '30s, we are probably lucky that initiatives even closer to socialism weren't introduced. With socialist agitators jockeying for position on the left, and isolationist conservatives on the right, it really is remarkable that Roosevelt could navigate what I would have to call a fairly centrist course.
While full of detail, the book moves very quickly. By page 137 he is stricken with polio, by page 249 he is president. The first third of the book, as you would expect, deals with the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal legislation. I found this section of the book rather tedious. But, with my newfound understanding of economics and finance, I hope to make sense of it when I read it again.
The book really got good for me on page 455, when the author, Conrad Black begins to dissect the events that led up to the Munich appeasement. This chapter (51 pages) is a tour de force and really sets the stage well for the run-up to Pearl Harbor (page 683).
Between the wars, most of America was blissfully isolationist. The strength of the these chapter is that Black shows us how FDR, who could surmise Hitler's intentions from the beginning, carefully and patiently moved public opinion towards a readiness to fight the Nazis and, of course, the Japanese. A consummate political leader, FDR in essence established the public opinion, rather than following it.
Once America is in the war, the last half of the book takes us through FDR's efforts to work with Churchill and Stalin to defeat the Axis.
Black concludes with an excellent analysis of the FDR's main achievements. Many historians criticize FDR for failing Eastern Europe at Yalta, but Black makes convincing arguments that given the military and political realities with which he was faced, Roosevelt proved successful.
Throughout this biography, Conrad Black proves himself not only a fair and detailed biographer, but also an exceptional eloquent writer.
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