Customer Reviews

FDR

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

FDR, by Jean Edward Smith, proves that no highly significant historical figure or event is beyond a great writer's ability to improve a particular body of literature. Indeed FDR is a towering work of both writing and scholarship. Smith again proves he is one of our foremost biographers and captures, in a very evenhanded way, the very essence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, this writing is up there with David Herbert Donald's Lincoln. Both took on truly larger than life topics and did so with energy and vigor.

The footnoting in FDR is highly extensive and the curious reader will look at many of them and make notes to read on additional topics as Smith piques the interest of any with any significant interest in Roosevelt. He, like Lincoln, was the President in a time where it is difficult to imagine, even for his critics, another person assuming the role. Smith explains and documents almost all of FDR's life and gives very plausible reasons for his rather radical views at the time, especially for one with his Hudson River pedigree. He tackles his many physical challenges, his relationship with his peripatetic wife Eleanor (see Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time) , his affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford, his intimate relationship with Churchill (see Jon Meacham's Franklin and Winston) and his reliance on a cast of eclectic personal and political operatives over the years. All of his public years are well covered, perhaps even more so his early years in New York politics.

There is very little, if nothing to criticize about this book. One could make an argument that Smith tried too hard to keep it a readable 636 pages with and additional 221 pages of notes and an exhaustive bibliography. Maybe two volumes would have improved this work, but that is sheer conjecture. This book must be read by all with more than a passing interest in 20th Century American history. Simply sublime.

Jean Edward Smith's FDR will likely become the standard reference biography on the former president given the rare combination of easy accessibility and comprehensive research about one of the most complicated figures in American history. While the one volume format may limit the depth of some topics like Yalta, the overall effect is to create a rare hybrid: something that is both very readable and very deeply referenced. Five stars.

As Smith notes in the foreword, there is a ridiculous volume of literature on FDR, his policies, his lieutenants, and his wife. Smith's gift is that he absorbs the massive amount of scholarship, does an impressive amount of primary source research - some of which even after all the preceding authors is still quite original - and then unlike most academics translates it into concepts even neophytes can understand. While shelves are filled with volumes detailing programs of the New Deal, Smith both explains the programs thoroughly and then adds on all the behind the scenes deal-making and politics, yet does so in a masterly crafted 55 pages.

This isn't to say that Smith hasn't done his homework. In some places he adds significantly to the existing literature. For instance, Roosevelt's stint as Assistant Secretary of the Navy is probably better explored than any other of his biographers. The results are interesting: FDR's Navy Secretary boss, Josephus Daniels, was not the pushover that many historians argue, FDR contributed a surprising amount to the war effort (it was FDR, not Daniels, that championed the Naval Reserve), and Smith strongly supports an argument that his administrative experience was not just a political education in learning how to deal with Congress but also provided the background to succeed as commander-in-chief during World War II. Some of this is original research, other parts are synthesizing a bunch of underutilized biographies, but in total it works nicely.

Smith is an unabashed admirer of Roosevelt - his parents' farm was electrified by the rural projects - but objectively criticizes policy and people in a distinctly non-partisan manner. Woodrow Wilson is torn to shreds as a bungling holier-than-thou racist zealot, and when FDR makes similarly bad mistakes Smith calls him to task. Smith spends a good deal of time attacking FDR's hubris in packing the Supreme Court and attempting to purge the party of conservatives. Those have been covered before by others, but he successful argues there is no little irony how the former crippled his legislative agenda and the latter, if successful, would have lead to disastrous consequences on later foreign policy votes. Other errors like the Japanese detention order and screwing up postwar Europe by largely excluding the State department from policy decisions because of a spat between him and Cordell Hull provide balance. Conspiracy theorists aren't going to like how he tramples the Pearl Harbor myths - Dean Acheson's role in scuttling FDR's final attempt towards defusing things is noteworthy - but the scholarship is there in the footnotes for those who want to look it up.

This is a biography that will likely be used as the starting point for most research on the subject matter for years to come. Smith is to be commended for showing that not all scholarly biographies have to break the back of the reader. 5 stars.

The debate will rage on forever - who is America's greatest president. One saved the union, the other saved it again, and also saved the world. This is the most readable, enjoyable and knowledgeable book on our thirty-second president. You will learn new things (not an easy thing to do in a FDR biography), come to know and appreciate the life and times of this great American and will not be able to put the book down. The book reads like no other biography - in some ways it feels like you are reading the mythical "great American novel". FDR was bigger than life and gave a better life to all Americans. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a better understanding of who he was and how he accomplished all that he did. My life is better for reading it,

I have a large shelf of books on FDR, both biographies and studies of particular aspects of his administration. Because I have read so many books on FDR in the past, I'm not sure that I learned all that much in this biography by Jean Edward Smith. In part this is because he engaged in very little original research. In part this is because most of the books that I have read go into far greater detail on particular aspects of his life or career. But I'm not sure there has ever been a book better at striking a proper balance in presenting all the aspects of his life. He both appreciates the staggering achievements as president -- he unquestionably did more to transform American life than any other president, always for the better -- and his shortcomings, like the Roosevelt recession, caused when he dramatically cut federal expenditures in his second term, his disastrous attempt to expand the supreme court, and the horrific injustice done to Japanese Americans in forcing them to relocate in WW II. Yet Smith also acknowledges the role FDR played not only in transforming the United States, but also in perhaps saving Europe from a Nazi victory. Has any single individual -- excluding founders of major religions -- done so much unqualified good for the world? Both Churchill and Stalin credited FDR as the crucial person in WW II. And what he achieved in his first term wrought changes in American life that has benefited hundreds of millions of Americans.

If you have read many other books on Roosevelt, there are sections of this book that will seem lacking in detail. There is, for instance, no way that Smith can match Doris Kearns Goodwin's marvelous account of the White House in the war years in NO ORDINARY TIME. And Smith can't in a hundred or so pages match what Arthur M. Schlesinger writes about the New Deal in 1,800. But what Smith can do and has done is present a marvelous overview of everything FDR stood far and accomplished. And it is clearly the finest one-volume biography ever written as such (the one competitor would be Frank Freidel's FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: A RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY, except that it was a rewriting of his earlier multi-volume biography into single-volume form). In a way, Smith's book is even preferable to John MacGregor Burns's and Kenneth Davis's multi-volume biographies simply because Smith does not feel compelled to write circumspectly about the complicated nature of Franklin and Eleanor's marriage and their emotional and/or sexual involvement with other individuals. Most Roosevelt biographers from the sixties and earlier were reticent to even mention Lucy Mercer's name and Earl Miller is mentioned only in the vaguest possible terms.

I especially liked how fairly and openly Smith wrote about the four extremely important women in his life: his mother Sara, his wife Eleanor, the love of his life Lucy Mercer, and his constant companion and secretary Missy Lehand (which evidence we have indicates was intimate without being sexual). I personally like Roosevelt more for his capacity to be great friends with women as well as men. Having recently read Schlesinger's three-volume THE AGE OF ROOSEVELT, it was mildly irritating how diligently Schlesinger avoided talking about Roosevelt's deep attachment to these women, even if (except for Lucy Mercer in the teens) these relationships were platonic. It helps, however, to understand FDR is you know that for twenty years Missy Lehand was far more intimate with and overwhelming more of a presence in FDR's life than his wife Eleanor.

Whatever the eccentricities in Franklin and Eleanor's marriage, it was a partnership that resulted in the most productive presidency in American history. No other president comes even remotely close to the degree of actual changes brought about than the first three Roosevelt administrations (he died early in his fourth). The wide range of changes in American life during the heyday of the New Deal has irreparably altered for good American life. When George W. Bush attempted to begin dismantling the New Deal by substituting individual retirement accounts for Social Security, he was stonewalled not just by the vast majority of the American people and the entirety of the Democratic party, but by key members of his own party like Kansas hyper conservative senator Sam Brownback, who stated bluntly that Social Security was not a negotiable. Even Americans who vaguely carp about the age of big government brought about by Roosevelt support virtually everything enacted in the New Deal. And the recent economic crisis affected individual Americans far less than it would because their money in banks was protected by federal insurance.

If you have not read a book on FDR before, this cannot be surpassed as a first book. I would, however, strongly recommend a couple of others as well. I mentioned above Doris Kearns Goodwin's NO ORDINARY TIME, about the Roosevelts during WW II. This is just an outstanding book in everyway. John MacGregor Burns wrote two outstanding books on Roosevelt, ROOSEVELT: THE LION AND THE FOX and ROOSEVELT: SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. If you want a book on the New Deal, William E. Leuchentenburg has written a very fine single-volume work, FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL 1932-1940. It isn't as entertaining as Goodwin's book, but the focus is obvious only the prior decade. Schlesinger's THE AGE OF ROOSEVELT is entertaining and deeply informative, but it is quite long, its three volumes coming in just under 2,000 pages. I have not yet read (but intend to shortly) Jonathan Alter's DEFINING MOMENT: FDR'S HUNDRED DAYS AND THE TRIUMPH OF HOPE. It has gotten a lot of attention due to Barack Obama's saying on 60 MINUTES that he was reading two books to prepare for becoming president, Alter's and the book being reviewed here, Smith's FDR. One book that I probably won't read right now but hope to someday is H. W. Brands's A TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS: THE PRIVILEGED LIFE AND RADICAL PRESIDENCY OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT. I've read other books by Brands, including his biography of Benjamin Franklin. He is an outstanding biographer, but having read four books on Franklin in the past couple of months and intending to read one more in the next couple of weeks, it is hard to justify reading yet another. But I suspect that it is a very good book.

Actually, because of the parallels between what Barack Obama hopes to accomplish in the first few months of his first term and what Roosevelt did early in his first term, there has been a great deal of attention on FDR lately. This is a very good thing. Though a whipping boy of conservatives the past three decades, the fact is that by any conceivable standard he is one of the greatest presidents in American history, if not the best. In the various rankings of American presidents he is always placed in the 'Great" class with Lincoln and Washington. But for actual accomplishments, he and Lincoln are in a class of their own. Lincoln dealt with the greatest crisis in American history, Roosevelt with the second and third greatest. But Roosevelt also put into place a vast array of governmental agencies that have created an incalculable amount of good. Most Americans own homes because of changes brought about Roosevelt. Bank failures have been both far rarer since Roosevelt and infinitely less destructive. The GI Bill, which he created, has resulted in the college education of millions of veterans. Unemployment insurance, oversight organizations like the SEC, and social security all derive from Roosevelt. On the other hand, all of Roosevelt's critics combined have failed to add a single governmental institution that has made our lives better. I think it is essential to know as much as possible about Roosevelt as we enter Obama's first term to understand better precisely what the power of government can achieve in improving the lives of individuals. Tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the very wealthy (the sole achievement of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years) have been great for increasing economic inequality and making America rife with millionaires, but unlike the Roosevelt years the Middle Class and the poor have suffered. I hope that Obama truly does intend to take a page from Roosevelt's book. I would love to live under a new Roosevelt.

This was a remarkably readable account of the 20th century's greatest president. Lord knows FDR wasn't perfect, and Smith doesn't shy away from discussing those points, which include FDR's court packing plan, the effort to squeeze out conservatives in elections, backing away from government assistance in the midst of recovery, and most importantly signing off on Japanese internment after the Pearl Harbor attacks. Stunning mistakes indeed. But FDR's successes were far grander. It's easy to recite the standard litany of Roosevelt successes, which Smith does well, but we also learn that FDR was a more caring, intelligent, and involved person than he has often been described as. Of some things that FDR has been criticized for, Smith offers evidence to support the need for a more nuanced appreciation of FDR's skills. First, though people often claim that the New Deal didn't end the Great Depression - it was WWII that did that - Smith accurately points out that millions of Americans benefitted from the New Deal. Second, realizing that everyone wishes FDR did more for black suffering in the US, Smith makes an interesting point in noting that FDR's true base of support for lending support to the British cause against Nazi aggression was Southern conservative Democrats. That is, if FDR pushed civil rights, he could not have taken important steps to help the Brits against Hitler. Third, though Smith didn't really go after the claims that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked, it's clear from Smith's excellent summary of the lead up to the Japanese attack that FDR clearly allowed no such infamous thing to happen. Finally, Smith forcefully defended FDR's handling of the Holocaust. Ultimately there wasn't much more FDR could have done.
If I had to point out any flaws in the book, I guess the last couple of chapters seemed to be more rushed than necessary. It's as if Smith became a bit tired of the project. I suppose there's some legitimacy to the approach, for FDR himself was worn down at the end of his presidency - and life. A nice epilogue summing up FDR's achievements would have also been sweet, but it wasn't necessary.

This is a well-written and engaging introduction to the life of Franklin Roosevelt, for the reader who knows little or nothing about him. That is the strength of this one-volume biography. The weakness is what Smith had to leave out to keep it to one volume (as he admitted himself recently during a question-answer session on Book TV).

For instance, before reading this book, I had not known about the role FDR's mother played in his youth and adulthood, or his relationship with Teddy Roosevelt, or how and when he contracted polio, or about his early government service. Smith introduced me to all of those subjects. I did know something about the last years of FDR's life, because I had read Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time. So, when I read through the last part of Smith's biography, I was shocked by how much he omitted as he skimmed over the surface of the World War II years. I suspect that someone with more knowledge of FDR would have the same reaction to the earlier chapters.

For someone new to the subject, this book provides introductory context for further reading on Franklin Roosevelt. Smith footnotes copiously (to an irritating extent, in fact), and provides a good bibliography. If you've read a good bit about FDR, though, this volume will only tell you what you already know.

This is the first biography of FDR I've read, so I don't have others to judge it by. But I was impressed by the writing as well as by the man.

While almost everyone considers FDR amongst the top contenders for great presidents, the author does a great job of pointing out FDR's failings as well as his successes. This, to me, brought a great deal of balance to the work that I had thought might not be present.

I am one who believes the New Deal brought us some social programs that are now proving to be abject failures (Social Security, Unemployment Insurance). It was most interesting to see that FDR, by his own words, would have considered these programs as modern-day failures, as well. That is, the funding disasters they have become were not part of his expectation, although he clearly recognized the potential for abuse.

Still, the first 100 days of FDR's presidency were days of massive accomplishment, by any metric. During this time he managed at least 15 major pieces of legislation and they were mostly what was needed to get the country back on its feet and through the great trials of the day. One wonders whether these accomplishments would have been as meaningful without WWII. Whether the New Deal programs, absent WWII, would have truly ended the Depression seems to be the subject of some speculation (that the spending cuts of the late 30s created a "Roosevelt Recession" seems to suggest the New Deal programs were temporary boosts in the economy that would not, taken alone, have solved the problem).

While FDR is frequently credited with ending the Great Depression, it is clear that his real achievement was in the masterful handling of WWII. It is difficult to imagine a better wartime president. The author presents great coverage of the relationships among FDR, Churchill, and Stalin, which I enjoyed reading about.

If I have a complaint it is minor. There is much more attention paid to the sheer politics, particularly in the earlier elections, than I would have preferred. I found these portions of the book to be less interesting, but that may be just a personal preference. I'm not particularly interested in New York politics of the day. Of course, others may be, so I do understand the need for these topics to be covered.

Overall, I found the book compelling. While it satisfied my interest in learning more about FDR and those years in our nation's history, I would say it has also encouraged me to read more about FDR, particularly during the third terms when I believe his greatness was truly established.

This is without a doubt the greatest biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that has ever been composed. The book has a tremendous attention to detail, and Smith is able to record even the driest bits of history with the liveliness of a village storyteller.

Now, this book is not without faults. At some times the story shifts from incident to incident with every paragraph, and he doesn't give some events the attention that they deserve. On the other hand, he may have perhaps given too much attention to insignificant events, and could have used that space elaborating on other points. However, I still feel that this is the best possible biography, and it is not so long as to make it impossible to read (although it is still rather long).

This biography is absolutely outstanding! Dr. Smith has provided incredible scholarship and depth on "who the man was" and done the same for many of the ancillary characters around F.D.R.. The book creates a stage for each of the phases of F.D.R.'s life, that presents the strengths and the flaws in a way that makes the man believable -- and lovable even 60 years after his death. Each chapter presents a unit of F.D.R.'s life, and each chapter is inspiring in its own right.
It's a long book, but I wish that every school could make it available to inspire students, not only for the courage that the man exhibited, but the wonderful humanity with which F.D.R. went out of his way to meet all kinds of Americans and touch their personhood. A rare man -- who should be an exemplar for this day and age.

After slogging through Conrad Black's 1200 page FDR bio, it's good to see a readable single volume bio of FDR. It does have value but there were a few things that struck me as curious. For example Smith completely whitewashes FDR's contempt for and insubordination to Josephus Danials. This is legendary. But there is no hint of it here. Also Smith's admiration, bordering on worship, of FDR is at times problematic. Such as when he attempts to minimize FDR's culpability in the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII. I am a great admirer of FDR's as well but I don't feel a need to make him 10 feet tall and bullet proof.

Also, I think it is a GLARING ERROR to state that Al Gore claimed to have "invented the internet". Although this is a common misconception, any cursory attempt at research would make it quickly and abundantly clear that Gore never said any such thing. It makes one question Smith's research.