Franklin Roosevelt was, in my view, a great President and almost alone among leaders in this country understood the danger posed by Nazi Germany to the Western World and civilization as we in the US understand it. Many events derogatory to FDR were left out and a fair number of statements were made that seem, at best, to be questionable to me. I would have liked to have been able to give this book 5 stars but found, to my disappointment, that the book seemed to be missing the objectivity that 60+ years after the events should have imparted. He writes very well and I consider this to be a valuable addition to the other books I have about FDR and the period from 1932 through 1945. Just as he divided the New Deal’s relief effort between Ickes and Hopkins, he split diplomacy between Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles.Mr Smith has written an extremely interesting biography of FDR and, in reading it I have learned things I had not seen in other books. “Īnd Smith: “Roosevelt’s approach to foreign policy was similar to his conduct of domestic affairs: intuitive, idiosyncratic, and highly personalized. He spoke to the American people directly asking them to trust him. Roosevelt didn’t ask Congress to cut the budget he asked Congress to let him cut the budget. Here is Brands: “… the style of Roosevelt was intensely personal. There were few institutions then to mitigate the blows that rained down on individuals and society. As his title implies, Brands views Roosevelt as a radical, in the sense of being willing to break from the past.

If there is a difference, Brands’s book is organized more by theme and Smith’s is more chronological. Each has gathered a vast amount of history into manageable form. He took action, and if that didn’t work politically or administratively, he did something else.īoth of these books are absorbing and read easily. Each of these books demonstrates that FDR, with his remarkable openness and optimism, reinvented the relationship between government and the private sector. The similarities and differences are made clear in two excellent biographies of the twentieth-century President who navigated the deep waters of the Depression and saved capitalism by his innovation. Both were young men when they set the Presidency as their goal both were optimistic and realistic both had a brilliant sense of timing both were open to policy differences and were good listeners. Brands’s biography of Roosevelt at the end of the summer, before the economy completely collapsed, and was struck then by the parallels between FDR and Obama.

FDR by Jean Edward Smith