The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America [Hardcover]

James MacGregor Burns (Author), Susan Dunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2001

The leadership of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt dramatically reshaped the political landscape of our nation, from TR's Square Deal to FDR's New Deal and wartime leadership to Eleanor Roosevelt's pivotal role in the early days of the United Nations. The Three Roosevelts is the first biography to combine the intertwining lives of these three leaders, who emerged from the closed society of New York's Knickerbocker elite to become unwavering enemies of economic privilege and the most prominent American political family of the twentieth century. As Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author James MacGregor Burns and acclaimed historian Susan Dunn follow the evolution of the progressive Roosevelt political philosophy, they illuminate how Theodore's vision and example would inspire the careers of his fifth cousin Franklin and niece Eleanor. The Three Roosevelts traces TR's transformation from Harvard-bred socialite to Republican reformer, president, and Bull Moose radical who declared war on the "wealthy scoundrels" and plutocrats. Franklin Roosevelt would continue this crusade as he closely followed TR's example, imitating his career track to the White House. After FDR's death, Eleanor carried on the progressive Roosevelt legacy through personal activism and advocacy, becoming a tireless champion of the rights of women, minorities, and the poor. Insightful and authoritative, The Three Roosevelts is a fascinating portrait of three of America's most forceful leaders, whose legacy is as controversial today as their vigorous brand of progressive politics was in their own lifetimes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As president, Theodore Roosevelt modeled himself after the man he admired most--his father, who believed in moral justice--and after the man his father admired most--President Lincoln, for his ability to be both a radical reformer and a shrewdly conservative politician. Although all three men were Republicans, TR grew further away from the party ideals held by the privileged class into which he was born (a life dedicated to pleasure bored him, and he was stimulated by the opportunities politics presented despite its grimy reputation), pushing for better conditions for workers, nationalized health care, the Pure Food and Drug Act and much more. His fifth cousin, Franklin (husband to TR's favorite niece), consciously mimicked TR's career path, going from assistant secretary of the navy, to New York governor, to president, eventually following another reform-oriented mentor, Woodrow Wilson, to become a Democrat. Growing up knowing little about politics, Eleanor Roosevelt was active in Junior League volunteerism and later the League of Women Voters, but it was under the influence of her husband's aide Louis Howe that she refined her political voice as a "big stick" activist like her uncle TR and her husband, who founded the welfare state. Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Burns (Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom) and Williams College professor Dunn (The Deaths of Louis XVI) do an excellent job of summarizing the political theology shared by these three Knickerbocker bluebloods, who were, in their time, categorized as "class traitors." While offering no new details, Burns and Dunn nevertheless succeed in approaching their subjects with grace, respect and insight. In the end, they do great justice to three remarkable lives superbly lived. (Mar.) Forecast: The Roosevelts remain a popular subject for readers, and with Burns's excellent reputation and the wide reviews this is bound to receive, it should sell handsomely beyond the narrow history market.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this eloquent book, noted political scientist and biographer Burns (Univ. of Maryland and Williams Coll.) demonstrates the masterly use of political psychology to understand both the power of leaders and the dynamic between leaders and followers. Co-written with Dunn (literature, Williams Coll.), this comparative case study of the Roosevelt political triumvirate applies Burns's leadership theory to Theodore and Franklin; an extension of his theory is also applied to Eleanor, the unelected member of the trio who was a national and world leader nonetheless. Skillfully woven throughout is the influence Abraham Lincoln had on the trioDa thread that gives this work cohesiveness and additional depth. A significant psychological element shared by all three was that they were members of society's upper crust who came to identify with those given society's crumbs. Essential.DWilliam D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; 1st edition (March 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871137801
• ISBN-13: 978-0871137807
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,996,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profiles in Leadership, April 22, 2001

By 

charles falk (Novato, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (Hardcover)

One of the pleasures of reading "The Three Roosevelts" by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn is that it reminds us of a time when this country achieved great things under great leaders. During the presidency of Republican Theodore Roosevelt the federal government challenged the activities of powerful, unregulated industries, protected the health and rights of working people, protected consumers from contaminated food and unsafe drugs, and built the Panama Canal. Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt oversaw the building of monumental dams and bridges that serve us still, created the Social Security system, and led the country effectively through the worst war the world has seen. Eleanor Roosevelt mobilized the conscience of her country and of the world on important issues of social justice after her husband and uncle had left the stage. It is chilling to contemplate how the world would look today had they not played the transforming roles they did.

The book is really a hybrid -- part biography and part political history. At times, it is organized, like "My Six Crises", around specific problems i.e. FDR and Court-packing, TR and the trusts, rather than according to chronological order. This synthesis limits details of the personal lives of the three in order to fill in eighty years' worth of historical context. Burn, emeritus historian of Williams College, has written two previous works on FDR. Dunn is Professor of the History of Ideas at Williams and has written about the French Revolution. The book's purpose, they say, is to examine how these three, members of a patrician family and a privileged class, became great "transformational leaders" of the 20th century.

The book is very good at showing the steps in that process, but less good at explaining where the interior compass came from that guided those steps. For example, TR at Harvard wrote his mother for information on the families of fellow students in order to make sure they were people of the right sort. Yet just six years later he was hobnobbing with cigar-chomping party hacks in a Republican club above a Manhattan saloon. "He aspired to be a hero in an age without heroes", conclude the authors. Undoubtedly true, but insufficient to explain what led him from the Porcellian Club and the slopes of San Juan Hill to battles for social legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Law and the Employers' Liability Law.

The introduction of the book suggests the Roosevelts took Lincoln as their model. This connects to the authors' concept of "trasformational leadership" and "transformational politics" as practiced by great leaders. But tracing a philsophical thread from Lincoln to TR's foreign policy and trust-busting is quite a stretch. TR compared himself to Lincoln in being a "cautious radical". The authors' make a much stronger case, it seems to me, for FDR having used TR, rather than Lincoln, as a role model. They say he consciously set out to follow in TR's footsteps: from Groton and Harvard to the New York Legislature, Department of the Navy, Governorship of New York, and the White House. Lincoln doesn't figure obviously, either, in Eleanor Roosevelt's transformation from anti-Semitic society matron to "First Lady of the World". It seems to have been her frequent contacts with the underprivileged during her White House years, well-documented by the authors, that transformed her world view. When she waded through ankle-deep mud to speak with "bonus army" veterans at their encampment, both she and they gained new perspective. "Hoover sent the Army", said one of men, "Roosevelt sent his wife". ER did not go just where her husband directed, but where her expanding conscience dictated.

Burns and Dunn have incorporated current academic research into their book. They draw a connection between FDR's "lurch to the left" in 1935 and the popularity of radical economic ideas espoused by Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Townsend. They give details of the FDR-Lucy Mercer affair -- a topic Burns called "rumormongers' gossip" in his 1956 biography of FDR.

One place where they differ radically from the mainstream of historical scholarship is in their contention that FDR was more radical in his final year than at any other time in his presidency. They call it his "last hundred days". To support this thesis, they point to his last State of the Union address which, like Lincoln's second inaugural, looked beyond the end of the war to ways to improve a nation at peace. He proclaimed an economic "second Bill of Rights". Earlier, in 1944, he explored with Wendel Wilkie the possibility of uniting liberals in both parties, but the idea died with Wilkie a few months later. FDR vetoed a tax bill as being "not for the needy, but for the greedy". He pushed the GI Bill of Rights through Congress. He pressed for the establishment of the IMF. He was exercising "transformational leadership" in the international arena by trying at Yalta to win the support of Stalin and Churchill for a strong United Nations. An amazing list of progressive accomplishments for a healthy, vigorous President -- much less a dying one.

The final section of the book deals briefly with Eleanor Roosevelt's energetic last two decades as a "world politician". She wrote a regular newspaper column, pressed the State Dept to recognize Israel, served as UN envoy, attacked Sen. McCarthy at the height of his power, used her name and money to support early civil rights efforts, participated in Democratic national politics, traveled the globe, and even found time to form an emotional attachment to Dr. David Gurewitsch. The authors say that her most enduring achievement was chairing the committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then in leading the fight for its enactment by the UN. A work that, Thirty years after her death, "still stands at the center of the planet's moral conscience".

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Three Roosevelts: They don't make 'em like that anymore!, May 24, 2001

By 

L. Feld "lowkell" (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (Hardcover)

All in all, "The Three Roosevelts" is well written, interesting, hard to put down, even a "page-turner" at times. Problems? Just a few. First is the sheer sprawling scope of the undertaking - ONE book on THREE Roosevelts, when there have been volumes written on EACH Roosevelt? But, overall this works pretty well here, and like the Roosevelts themselves, it's hard to fault the authors for trying to cover too much ground. A more fundamental problem with the book is that although the three Roosevelts' lives overlapped to an extent, their political careers and activities were more or less separate, sometimes giving this book the feel of really being three books sort of stuck together. First, we have a relatively short book on Teddy Roosevelt, followed by a moderately long book on FDR, and then another relatively short book on Eleanor. Are there common themes here tying it all together? Absolutely. But are there also three separate individuals here, each with his/her own story? Absolutely. The last fault of "The Three Roosevelts" is perhaps the most problematic; namely, the authors obviously LOVE their subjects, and the overwhelming positive slant on all three Roosevelts (the authors occasionally cite a fault, but usually just to show how the particular Roosevelt in question overcame it and became a better person) can become a little annoying at times, and even hurt the authors' credibility somewhat. Personally, I agree that these three people were amazing, fascinating, important, even heroic figures, but they were certainly not perfect. The internment of Japanese-Americans under FDR, to cite just one example, is an absolute disgrace, a moral outrage, and a HUGE blot on FDR's record. Teddy Roosevelt's nationalistic/imperialistic jingoism, cruel streak, and even bloodthirstiness are certainly not endearing or admirable qualities either!

Having said all that, I still really liked this book, and definitely recommend it. Basically, the authors do an excellent job with the fascinating story of how three pampered, upper-class snobs became courageous activists, leaders, and champions of the common man. The authors give us a good feel for how Eleanor Roosevelt grew to eventually leave "the insular world of the patrician elite far behind." Also, how FDR and TR came to despise the idle rich, and how they both came to see inherited wealth as immoral and un-American (FDR: "the transmission from generation to generation of vast fortunes...is not consistent with the ideals and sentiments of the American people"). What would FDR and TR have made of the current Republican Party's zeal to repeal the "Death Tax," as they call it?" Mincemeat, for one thing! But, sadly, the Franklin and Teddy Roosevelts of the world seem to be in short supply these days - in either political party.

A constant theme throughout "The Three Roosevelts" is that of the WASP establishment vs. the "class traitors" (the Roosevelts), and how each side came to hate each other. The authors have some interesting things to say about this issue. For instance, that hatred of FDR signified not just rational opposition to his economic policies, but seemed to stem even more from the WASP establishment's "horror of equality, from their fear of losing their privileges and, even worse, their sense of privilege." J.P. Morgan had even warned that "if you destroy the leisure class, you destroy civilization." Thus, the authors point out that, even as conditions for the wealthiest 2% improved, their "extravagant, hysterical attacks" on FDR actually increased. And FDR responded in kind, reveling in the hatred of business leaders/plutocrats who wanted only, in his words, "power for themselves, enslavement for the public," and comparing them to the fascist menace abroad. On the contrary, FDR had been educated - by Cousin Ted and others - to believe that the "noble, virtuous life" consisted not of profit maximization, but of public service. In Teddy Roosevelt's memorable words, the rich were "malefactors of great wealth." And Eleanor grew to see her class as seriously limited, narrow-minded, smug, reactionary, anti-Semitic, and racist.

Ultimately, the authors portray all three Roosevelts as people of courage, vigorous people of ACTION above all, people who disdained the trivial, non-productive life they had left behind, people who were willing to descend "into the vulgar world of office-seeking" (in other words, real life) to interact with different classes, ethnicities, religions, and even races. In other words, the Roosevelts did what most members of their class shunned. Although the Roosevelts certainly were not intellectuals or "geniuses" in the usual sense, all three are portrayed as brilliant in their ability to "[recognize] the needs of...people early on," to "[sense] their political mood," and to "[mobilize] their support." In sum, the authors conclude that the three Roosevelts represented transformational leaders for America in the 20th century, changing the course of events dramatically from what they were, and what they might have been. As the authors conclude, "from 1881, when TR first ran for the New York State Assembly" until the rise of Reagan conservatism a century later, "the three Roosevelts charted the course of progressive reform in America." A fascinating story, well told.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FANTASTIC BOOK, February 18, 2003

By 

"juliefalcon2001" (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (Paperback)

This novel was immensely informative and entertaining. I am an English teacher who reads a lot, and I could not put it down. I loved the descriptions of leaders such as Huey Long and Gerald Smith and the isolationist movement. It was also impressive that it was so well-balanced and avoided sensationalism and cheap shots. The authors did not take sides or make quick judgments. You must read this book. My two favorite sections were the descriptions of the New Deal and the class struggle in New York during TR's time.