Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny [Paperback]

Frank Freidel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 1991

The best single-volume biography of our greatest twentieth-century present Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Freidel portrays FDR as a decisive visionary who rescued the nation's economy and defended democracy on a worldwide basis, disputing opponents who perceive him as shallow, incompetent and dictatorial. "This is as fine a one-volume biography of the 32nd president as we are likely to get," said PW. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

One volume has been too small a vessel for most FDR biographers. Five multivolume projects are on the shelves, while only three recent works of significance measure Roosevelt's entire life in a single book. The latest is Freidel's, whose Franklin D. Roosevelt (1952-73), even in four volumes, doesn't go past 1933. The graceful narrative of that magnum opus is absent in the author's new work, which is not so much a true biography as a distillation of the mass of Roosevelt scholarship. Freidel's new life concentrates on Roosevelt's presidency, with public events the consistent focus, and the private man left mainly alone. What results is the most authoritative of the one-volume works; but Nathan Miller's FDR ( LJ 1/1/83) will often be the best choice for nonacademic readers, and Ted Morgan's FDR ( LJ 11/1/85) is also available. For all college and many public libraries.
- Robert F. Nardini, N. Chichester, N.H.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 710 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books (April 2, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316292613
• ISBN-13: 978-0316292610
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #794,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #63 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( R ) > Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Complete & complex., May 23, 2002

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Rheumor (New Orelans) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Paperback)

This one volume biography of FDR is probably the best distillate possible, though the task is daunting and the result is less than perfect. At times, the book 'drags' a bit, particularly through the 30s. Explanations of New Deal politics perhaps don't lend themselves to the kind of exciting story-telling that wartime meetings at places such as Tehran and Yalta do. In fact, I sometimes felt the book lapsed into an economics textbook, but it is still mostly quite readable. Freidel does not editorialize much about his subject and so (fortunately) one is left to draw one's own conclusions about FDR.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely indepth, and sometimes cumbersome, April 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Paperback)

This book was quite interesting, involving Roosevelts entire life, including every little nugget of his political life. If you are moderatly interested in FDR, read this book, but be warned, if you are just a casual reader, it may be best not to get a book that is so detailed. I certainly enjoyed this book, and would recommend to any political science student, or a person studying history. FDR was an interesting man, and it was a joy to read about this brilliant president.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Destiny Here Means the War, not the Depression, March 22, 2008

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous With Destiny (Hardcover)

I've revisited this book, which I read years ago, with hopes of including it in my set of recent reviews of books about the Depression of the 1930s. I hear so much ill-informed chatter from self-defined conservatives about the New Deal that I feel an urge to provide the reading material to deepen their understanding. This book, however, although it is the standard biography of FDR in many college classes, offers very little insight into the New Deal years, spending most of its energy on the later wartime FDR. It is unquestionably a book of muted adulation, almost a hagiography, and Roosevelt detractors will find it shallow and irritating at best. Myself a Roosevelt respecter but not partisan, I find it shallow, also, and particularly where it matters most. Freidel describes the politics of FDR's "court packing" failure without analyzing what was really at stake and to what degree FDR's threats forced the American judiciary to reformulate much of the law of labor relations to suit a mixed liberal democracy (liberal in the classic economic sense).
It's not only quixotic but also destructive to swelter in anarcho-capitalist or libertarian myths about FDR and the New Deal. Critics of Roosevelt are advised at least to know their man.