Franklin Delano Roosevelt

By Wilson Sullivan

Book Overview

The life of the thirty-second President who was elected to that office four consecutive times. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 082818027X
• ISBN13: 9780828180276
• Release Date: January 1970
• Publisher: American Heritage, 1970
• Length: 154 Pages

Customer Reviews

The American Heritage Library volume on FDR

Most of us who remember the American Heritage Junior Library from our youths have fond memories of it and this volume on "Franklin Delano Roosevelt" by Wilson Sullivan shows why. Opposite the Foreword there is a page showing postage stamps commemorating FDR from Monaco, El Salvador, and the United States; Roosevelt was a dedicated philatelist from his youth. This represents the sort of details that are found through this informative volume. Just in terms of the photographs you have FDR playing Uncle Bopaddy in his senior year at Groton, about to lift himself out of a car in 1932, the edited first page of his first inaugural address, a bottle celebrating the TVA with Roosevelt's head as the cork, and FDR driving around Fala, the infamous Scotch terrier. There are also the most famous pictures of FDR's political career: standing on a street talking with a voter during the Depression and the tear stained face of Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson playing "Going Home" after the President's death. Add to this a few choice cartoons about both Franklin (A young boy write "ROOSEVELT" on the sidewalk and his sister reports "Mother, Wilfred wrote a bad word") and Eleanor (one amazed miner deep underground tells the other, "For gosh sakes, here comes Mrs. Roosevelt). The Editors of "American Heritage" magazine set the tone for this look at FDR by making it clear that it was not until the summer of 1921 when Roosevelt was struck down by polio that his character turned into that of a great politician (and political leader, since those are not the same thing). The key quote is Roosevelt's political philosophy that "Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of its citizenship." Within that context Sullivan tells the story of FDR's life and political career as emphasizing action rather than talk and experimentation rather that theory, both of which are exemplified as the guiding principles behind his legislative New Deal. Within these pages Sullivan tries to reconcile the scion of Hyde Park with the diplomat of Casablanca, Teheran, and Yalta. However, it must be noted that you will not find any mention of Lucy Mercer, the woman with whom FDR had an affair in 1918 and in whose presence he died in 1945. Still, it is easy to see what that sort of detail would not be deemed important in a juvenile biography published in 1970; today, such things have considerably more salience, as I am sure most young students are painfully aware. One advantage of this volume is that it focuses primarily on Roosevelt's years in the White House. The first chapter deals with his life before being stricken with polio while FDR is elected president by the end of the second. Chapters are then devoted to the New Deal, FDR's reinvention of government, his efforts to prepare the nation for World War II, and his tenure as Commander in Chief for most of the war. Young readers will get a sense of exactly why FDR was the first 20th century President to get his visage on a coin