Customer Reviews

The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Library of Freedom)

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The point of Franklin Roosevelt's brilliant fireside chats and other seminal speeches was that the listener could hear his voice and experience his charisma. This is impossible with this book which is merely lifeless words on the printed page. Of course some of FDR's speeches make interesting reading, but the entire thrust of his message is lost without the resonant voice and the indefinable "something" he brought to the microphone.

Just yesterday I was listening on CD to FDR's incomparable Pearl Harbor speech from December 8, 1941. Even though this was long before I was born, I always get goosebumps listening to his intonations, the cheering from the Representatives and Senators and the feeling that you are actually witnessing history. There is none of this in this book, where reading speeches is a paltry substitute (at best) for listening to FDR, who was perhaps the most effective Presidential orator of the 20th century. Those who extol Reagan as an effective and charismatic communicator need to listen to Roosevelt.

My advice is to buy a CD with the collected speeches of FDR and ignore this book. The idea is good but the premise flawed. You need to hear Roosevelt's voice, not merely read his words.

The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt is by far the most comprehensive collection of that President's major works. Each and every piece presented in this book is historically relevant. Formatted in chronological order, Hunt takes his reader on a journey from Roosevelt's First Gubernatorial Inaugural Address to remarks Roosevelt gave to congress on the Yalta Conference days before his death. The Essential FDR is the perfect book for anyone from a Roosevelt scholar or research-paper-writing high school student. Almost 350 pages of anything quotable by one of history's greatest men. As an aside, John Gabriel Hunt's introduction is also quite informative and gives great background information. If you want FDR, you want this book!

First - I hate political books that make it seem that you have to have an MBA to read it. But this book is intelligent, a reference guide, and a great book to which you will read great works of speeches. FDR, is a great idealist and essentially a great man. This is a great book, in which to read his thoughts.