Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom: Volume 2, 1940-1945 [Paperback]

James MacGregor Burns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2002

This award-winning companion volume to Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox concludes the first and most acclaimed complete biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Undoubtedly the most comprehensive study of one of America's most acclaimed presidents, this classic biography is unparalleled in its depth, accuracy, and accomplishment.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I believe this will be the definitive book on Roosevelt in the wary years" --William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

"A work so readable and so wise in the ways of our modern domestic and international history that anyone who would understand the American republic at this perilous point in the 20th century should not miss it." -- Stewart L. Udall

"Engrossing, informative, endlessly readable." -- Barbara Tuchman, author of The Guns of August

About the Author

Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, James MacGregor Burns is a preeminent historian and political scientist, and he is considered by many to be the leading expert on the subject of leadership. He the author of several books, including Leadership and The Three Roosevelts. He is a professor emeritus at Williams College.

Product Details

• Paperback: 736 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (December 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156027577
• ISBN-13: 978-0156027571
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #574,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Writing. Scholarly, yet a Pleasure. Pulitzer Prize, June 2, 2005

By 

T. Carlsen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom: Volume 2, 1940-1945 (Paperback)

This scholarly, yet elegant, book won the Pulitzer Prize, Francis Parkman Prize, and National Book Award. It thoroughly covers Roosevelt's presidency leading up to and including World War II, and yet the prose is unusually engaging for a work with so much information. It is somewhat critical of Roosevelt in tone, such as his treatment of Jewish refugees and difficulties in managing the war.

"Soldier of Freedom" covers America's dilemma leading up the war. Should America get involved or not? How should Roosevelt lead an isolationist America to responsibly confront the war that waged in Europe? How should America plan for the threat? What strategy to win the biggest war in history? What kind of peace? Once the war began, America needed to become mobilized. This book tells the story of war administration in detail. It covers especially well Roosevelt's diplomacy, so important for victory. He understood that alliances would be crucial to win World War Two, which meant tactful maneuvers and calculated trade-offs. The book also presents Roosevelt's interpretation of the meaning of the war and his vision for a better post-war world. As one of the reviews states on the back of the book, "Soldier of Freedom" combines rigorous scholarship while being enjoyable to read.

"The Time 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century" named Einstein, Gandi and Franklin D. Roosevelt the three most important people of that Century. This book partly explains why FDR was the most important politician of the 20th Century. FDR created the modern, powerful presidency. He transformed America from weak, uninvolved isolationism into an active superpower. He established the firm posture of moral, yet pragmatic, international leadership (FDR Americanism) that would serve America (and the world) so well through the Cold War.

James MacGregor Burns, the author, is a great scholar and biographer, and therefore I believe this to be a highly authoritative biography. For example, Burns also wrote one of the best biographies of George Washington. He has authored several excellent works about leadership, including the book "Transforming Leadership." I believe his scholarship is highly authoritative and fair. I remember reading quotes that Burns made in newspaper stating that Ronald Reagan was "a great or near-great president" because Reagan was a "transforming" president, like Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt. (Reagan, by the way, adored FDR, voted for him multiple times, and attended one of FDR's inaugurations - a deeply moving event for Reagan).

General readers interested in Franklin Roosevelt can also choose from many other one-volume biographies by other authors, such as Black's superb "Champion of Freedom," "Leuchtenburg's "Franklin D. Roosevelt," Friedel's "Rendezvous with Destiny," or Jenkins' brief "Franklin Delano Roosevelt."

Finally, Roosevelt was a powerful speaker. In one survey of speech experts, Roosevelt was ranked the greates presidential speeker, with Reagan coming in second. (Reagan borrowed heavily from Roosevelt, both in style and content). Roosevelt's inauguration speech in 1940 is regarded as one of the ten greatest presidential speeches. It wonderfully defined the impending struggle for freedom against Hitler. Here is Roosevelt's speech:

"On each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have renewed their sense of dedication to the United States.

"In Washington's day the task of the people was to create and weld together a nation.

"In Lincoln's day the task of the people was to preserve that Nation from disruption from within.

"In this day the task of the people is to save that Nation and its institutions from disruption from without.

"To us there has come a time, in the midst of swift happenings, to pause for a moment and take stock--to recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not, we risk the real peril of inaction.

"Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.

"There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future--and that freedom is an ebbing tide.

"But we Americans know that this is not true.

"Eight years ago, when the life of this Republic seemed frozen by a fatalistic terror, we proved that this is not true. We were in the midst of shock--but we acted. We acted quickly, boldly, decisively.

"These later years have been living years--fruitful years for the people of this democracy. For they have brought to us greater security and, I hope, a better understanding that life's ideals are to be measured in other than material things.

"Most vital to our present and our future is this experience of a democracy which successfully survived crisis at home; put away many evil things; built new structures on enduring lines; and, through it all, maintained the fact of its democracy.

"For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions come to naught.

"Democracy is not dying.

"We know it because we have seen it revive--and grow.

"We know it cannot die--because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise--an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.

"We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.

"We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.

"We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still spreading on every continent--for it is the most humane, the most advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human society.

"A nation, like a person, has a body--a body that must be fed and clothed and housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that measures up to the objectives of our time.

"A nation, like a person, has a mind--a mind that must be kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and the needs of its neighbors--all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the world.

"And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more permanent, something larger than the sum of all its parts. It is that something which matters most to its future--which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its present.

"It is a thing for which we find it difficult--even impossible--to hit upon a single, simple word.

"And yet we all understand what it is--the spirit--the faith of America. It is the product of centuries. It was born in the multitudes of those who came from many lands--some of high degree, but mostly plain people, who sought here, early and late, to find freedom more freely.

"The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It blazed anew in the middle ages. It was written in Magna Charta.

"In the Americas its impact has been irresistible. America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this continent a new life--a life that should be new in freedom.

"Its vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into the Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of the United States, into the Gettysburg Address.

"Those who first came here to carry out the longings of their spirit, and the millions who followed, and the stock that sprang from them--all have moved forward constantly and consistently toward an ideal which in itself has gained stature and clarity with each generation.

"The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.

"We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly build the security and the opportunity and the knowledge of every citizen, in the measure justified by the resources and the capacity of the land.

"But it is not enough to achieve these purposes alone. It is not enough to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and instruct and inform its mind. For there is also the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is the spirit.

"Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not live.

"But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know would have perished.

"That spirit--that faith--speaks to us in our daily lives in ways often unnoticed, because they seem so obvious. It speaks to us here in the Capital of the Nation. It speaks to us through the processes of governing in the sovereignties of 48 States. It speaks to us in our counties, in our cities, in our towns, and in our villages. It speaks to us from the other nations of the hemisphere, and from those across the seas--the enslaved, as... Read more ›

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Political Biography, April 8, 2011

By 

Mike B (CANADA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom 1940-1945 (Paperback)

This is a well-written history of Roosevelt in power from 1940 to his death in 1945. Burns captures well the events and feelings of the times. His descriptions of war-torn Europe and Asia plus the different characters and their roles is very good. The relations of Roosevelt to the power players of the era - Churchill, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek are excellent. There are depictions of the historical events in Normandy, Stalingrad which are succinct but well-crafted.

He does give us the ambivalence of Roosevelt - who was the best actor of that epoch. Roosevelt would be constantly probing to see how far he could go without jeopardizing his popularity in the U.S. If he would have declared war prior to Pearl Harbour all would have been lost. It may have been justified, but Roosevelt knew how to manage and balance the "right thing" with his hold on power.

But Burns gives us little of the personal Roosevelt. There is little on his relationship with those closest to him - like Eleanor, his mother or his children. Even his relationship with those in his government - Harry Hopkins, Francis Perkins is barely mentioned. Roosevelt was a very communicative human being - he loved gossip and wanted to know what made people tick.

Burns is excellent on the political side of Roosevelt, but the personal side is ignored.