The most recommended books on FDR (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

This depicts the intimacy between Eleanor and Lorena Hickok, a reporter for the Associated Press, that existed at the time Eleanor first moved into the White House in spite of vast differences between the social backgrounds of the two women. Describes Hickok's influence on Eleanor's contacts with other women reporters as well as Hickok's undercover reports on poverty-stricken areas for the Roosevelt administration that prompted Eleanor to personally undertake relief efforts in West Virginia.

Few Americans remember the Marshall Plan that helped make western Europe the economic powerhouse it is today. Fewer still remember the man behind the Marshall Plan, who led the U.S. military during World War II, and later became Secretary of State. Pogue’s four-volume biography isn’t your usual military biography with a long recitation of battles, dates, and minutiae about guns and ships. It’s about how an obscure career officer who never went to West Point became the confidant of two presidents and the mentor of a future one, Dwight Eisenhower (who later betrayed him during the Trump-like McCarthy era). When political integrity is in short supply, Pogue reminds us of a time when a politically astute general kept his.

For a generation of liberals and progressives, it was an article of faith that Alger Hiss, a Harvard-educated New Dealer who accompanied Franklin Roosevelt to Yalta, was railroaded by the McCarthyite tactics of the anti-Communist right when was accused – and convicted—about his past as a Communist spy. But Weinstein, who started out his book as a Hiss sympathizer, conducted a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of one of the Cold War’s most celebrated trials and concluded, on the basis of a mountain of evidence, that Hiss was in fact guilty as charged. I devoured this book when it first came out because it stands as a case study of the need to confront hard facts even when they are politically inconvenient. 

In the 1930s, Republicans across America heaped criticism on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, which they claimed would wither free enterprise and damage the economy. They labeled him a “socialist”—or worse.

Among the Republicans who broke with this broad Republican assault on FDR was John G. Winant, the Republican governor of New Hampshire. Winant gave up state politics to establish FDR’s Social Security program, and after the start of World War II Winant became FDR’s ambassador to London.

Winant’s courage, first in breaking with his party to join FDR, and then helping Winston Churchill and the British people fend off the Nazi assault, is part of Lynne Olson’s authoritative Citizens of London, the Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour.

A classic book by one of our country’s most eminent historians, The Age of Reform traces the interplay between American politics and the clashing forces within American society from the time of Jefferson to the time of Franklin Roosevelt. In between, the great social movements – pro-and anti-slavery, populism, progressivism, the New Deal – all play out on a vast canvas. Religion is not the centerpiece of Hofstadter’s narrative, but it’s there throughout, sometimes on stage and at other times in the background. I’ve been recommending this book to my students for years.

1942’s Rose Bowl game was moved, in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, from Pasadena, California, to safer environs on the East Coast in Durham, North Carolina. In North Carolina, Oregon State beat host Duke 20-16, but even greater—and far more deadly—contests were ahead for the team’s players. Brian Curtis takes his readers from the Rose Bowl to the battles ultimately fought in Italy, Normandy, the Ardennes, and the Pacific.

The author’s perspective on human rights and the process would not be something I would endorse, but it is, nonetheless, to date, the best book on the details of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it wound its way through the United Nations. 

Throughout the early 20th century, General Smedley Butler was the go-to commander for overthrowing other countries' governments on behalf of US interests. So, when American fascists conspired to oust then-recently elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt, they recruited Butler to lead their coup attempt. The fascists’ error: they failed to take Butler’s remorse seriously when, in a 1931 speech, he lamented his career as a "…high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and the bankers." The Plot to Seize The White House details how Butler brought the conspiracy down.

I was reminded as I read that there always were—and will be—powerful people eager to topple the barriers democracy puts in their way. But it’s also a reminder that, as in the 2020 election, principled people, in the right positions, make all the difference. 

Elliott Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor's third-born, must have read his older brother's book and thought, "That’s not all!"

Always sensitive to his surroundings, Elliott knew things were not right between his parents. He felt the turbulence of Eleanor's "Griselda" moods, recounting an incident that drove her to fire all of their servants after mounting distrust. Where older brother James would write of catching fish with their father on a boat trip, Elliott divulged the sting of witnessing Missy LeHand on his father's lap during that same trip. Elliott also mentioned household staff members including Frances and Millie, who come to the forefront in my own novel.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, cast together by the rising tide of fascism, became allies to fight their common enemy.

Their politics, however, in some ways stood in sharp contrast. FDR was a liberal Democrat who believed in using the levers of government to help those thrown out of work by the Great Depression. Churchill was a Conservative who had fought many a battle against Britain’s liberals.

Yet the two men broke the rules of rigid adherence to any party. 

As Jon Meacham puts it in his masterful Franklin and Winston, “Churchill changed parties from Conservative to Liberal and back again, and the vicissitudes of his views did not surprise those closest to him.” As for FDR, who built an alliance with prominent Republicans during the war, one associate pointed to the “flexibility of the Roosevelt mind.”