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A Traitor To His Class The Privileged Life And Radical Presidency Of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008)

by H.W. Brands(Favorite Author)

4.06 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Double Day

review 1: Wow, this was a good one. I'd say, like, 4.6 or 4.7 stars. Don't judge it by how long it took me to get through it -- I had a very strange month and multiple weekends of travel and didn't read a page for days at a time three different times. When I did read, I was fascinated by FDR's life, impressed by his leadership, alarmed by his (for lack of a better word) manipulation, and so intrigued by how it all went down. I learned new things about Eleanor, about Stalin, about the war effort, about the Cabinets and VPs, about the New Deal... It was a very informative 800-page adventure. I started out reading with the bad FDR taste left in my mouth from the Hoover bio; the two were so decidedly different, and I really thought FDR treated him poorly, from the Hoover perspective. Bu... moret basically, the new administration just had no use for the old ways, and while I didn't come around to saying FDR acted well and nobly toward Hoover, I just think he didn't give him the time of day. It's interesting -- Hoover was so rugged-individualistically self-made rich, and FDR was so born-into-wealth, and look how differently their political lives/theories ended up. (That said: Hoover is misunderstood, and I think he meant well - a lot better than some current politicians! But this is about FDR...) And no matter how poorly FDR might have treated Eleanor/marriage, or how cunning he was with everyone around him, or how deceptive he could be, he was, bottom line, a leader. He straight-up led the country through the New Deal, the recovery, the 1930s, and then the war. It's almost mind-boggling all that he did and everyone he met and interacted with, all while carrying the weight of his leg braces or supporting his body weight at podiums or otherwise dealing with his physical problems but never letting them see him sweat! It becomes, sadly, not really mind-boggling at all that the job killed him, in the end. It's hard for me to support military "triumphs" because I'm so disgusted by the fact that the world uses war to confront problems, but I couldn't help but respect FDR, Churchill, and Stalin and all that they did to deal with the menace of Hitler. I came away from this book wanting to read more about both Churchill and Stalin. They're so famous, but the glimpses of them in this book intrigue me and make me want to know more about the little things, the personal touches.Definitely recommended. Worth the time commitment. A great dose of history.
review 2: This is the first full length biography of FDR I've read, and it was a great adventure. I was originally a bit disappointed--from the title, I'd assumed this book was more explicitly about the reactions of American's ruling class to the depression, the New Deal, and the war, but I'll have to look to another book for that.Brands's project is a readable one-volume work covering enough of FDR's early years and family history, and enough of his battle with polio to prepare the reader to meet the heroic President who guides America (and, as Brands points out ably, the world) through World War 2. He succeeds in this, though I would have liked more detail (and yes, tolerated a longer book--Brands is an enjoyable prose stylist) about missteps and defeats like the Court-packing fiasco, and a clearer explanation of the different war strategies pursued by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. This fault is mostly that of the reader, though--some of this would have been clearer were I better read on American history. Overall this is a good introduction to one of the most ass-kickingest Presidents ever and I'm glad I gave it a try. less

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