It was Roosevelt who revolutionized the art of campaigning and used the burgeoning mass media to garner public support and allay fears. Summing up Roosevelts legacy, Jean Smith declares that FDR, more than any other individual, changed the relationship between the American people and their government. Additionally, Smith offers a sensitive and balanced assessment of Roosevelts response to the Holocaust, noting its breakthroughs and shortcomings.

Smith also tackles head-on and in-depth the numerous failures and miscues of Roosevelt s public career, including his disastrous attempt to reconstruct the Judiciary the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans and Roosevelts occasionally self-defeating Executive overreach. Here also is FDRs private life depicted with unprecedented candor and nuance, with close attention paid to the four women who molded his personality and helped to inform his worldview: His mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, formidable yet ever supportive and tender his wife, Eleanor, whose counsel and affection were instrumental to FDRs public and individual achievements Lucy Mercer, the great romantic love of FDRs life and Missy LeHand, FDRs longtime secretary, companion, and confidante, whose adoration of her boss was practically limitless. Smith recounts FDRs battles with polio and physical disability, and how these experiences helped forge the resolve that FDR used to surmount the economic turmoil of the Great Depression and the wartime threat of totalitarianism.

We see how Roosevelt s restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. In this superlative volume, Jean Edward Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to provide an engrossing narrative of one of Americas greatest presidents. Now, at last, we have a biography that is right for the man - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World One of todays premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Book Synopsis NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A model presidential biography. About the Book In this superlative volume, Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to provide an engrossing narrative of one of Americas greatest presidents.

FDR by Jean Edward Smith