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Although this detracted from the overall effect of the story, I would still only characterize it as a minor criticism and it certainly should not affect one's determination to read this otherwise excellent account.For all historians and general readers alike, this brilliant effort by Jean Smith should be relished as one of the definitive accounts of both the presidency and life of FDR. Covering the life of a monolith like Roosevelt can lead one down many a complex path.Smith's story however is straight ahead biography. Well versed and expository, this book is well worth the time commitment (over 600 pages of text) and I recommend it highly. FDR and Winston Churchill formed a close alliance and friendship that was a key element to winning the war and Smith shows how this relationship helped both become better statesmen as well as ultimate leaders in the war mangement.The end of the book is my only criticism of Smith's work.we seem to go from FDR's improbable election for a fourth term in 1944 to his 1945 death in comparatively short order.
The test then of any biographer is to consolidate this into a concise and readable account.here Jean Smith succeeds magnificently with FDR. This typically has led to many volumes of dry, boring history that has filled multiple library shelves. FDR's complex family legacy, his ties and relationship to his uncle Teddy and privileged upbringing encompass a good portion of the first quarter of the book. He makes his mark initially in State government which ultimately leads to an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson at a time where his political and organizational skills serve the country best as he worked full time in managing the country's response to WWI.
His close advisors Louis Howe and Missy LeHand are rightly portrayed as an important element in FDR's political and personal life by Smith and show how they helped mold his outlook. The difference here is that it is so well written. Smith's extreme storytelling ability separate the important issues from the mundane and the reader gets an uncomplicated understanding of FDR's upbringing. His mother Sara is rightly singled out as his major influence and FDR's actions throughout his life are referenced back to her.Not being an FDR expert, I was enthralled at the many revelatory twists and turns that this man went through to become the stalwart that we all know. Any biography or history of FDR and the era that he served necessarily must include much detail concerning economics, politics and worldview strategy.
He contracts what's believed to be polio in 1927, but the reader learns that it's in fact Guillian-Barre syndrome that he's afflicted with and Smith is excellent at accounting for the onset of the disease and the subsequent actions to cover it up so as to not affect his political career. The New York governorship then follows.all setting the stage for his run for the presidency in 1932.Smith balances FDR's personal side into the narrative and the reader learns all about his initial relationship and marriage to Eleanor and his dalliances with Lucy Mercer.this leading to a surprising Clintonesque partnership with Eleanor that ends up being beneficial for both he and Eleanor as well as the country. Clearly, the highlight of this book and FDR's life is his involvement and management of WWII. Smith provides much evidence and erudition on the government's knowledge and involvement with Japan prior to Pearl Harbor correctly contradicting the detractors that intimated that he and they had prior knowledge of the attack. After college, he spins his wheels for a while as an unmotivated lawyer, than hits his stride as he discovers his true calling in politics. A smooth flowing narrative that not only covers the history but also the inner man, this book is truly deserving of the Parkman prize for historical biography. Smith accelerates FDR's declining health and death in a fashion that (hopefully incorrectly) suggests meeting a publishing deadline.I felt that this portion of the book deserved a much more in depth analysis.
His education was the finest money could provide (Groton and Harvard), but the young FDR seemed to understand that education, although important, wasn't the end all to meeting his life goals. Here the FDR personality comes to the forefront and he accelerates to the heights of the New York political scene. Certainly he should have expanded on the almost criminal cover up of FDR's condition from the American public and the subsequent outrage that it engendered years later.
As a political science major, I wanted to read more about the late, great FDR. This book is easy to read, highly informative and of course, very interesting. If you're interested in American political history and one of the most influential presidents of all time, I cannot recommended this book enough. The author does a great job in captivating the reader and taking you into the world of FDR.
So it would appear Smith is capable of investigating this type of error, but in this specific instance, on the Holmes quote, he's light on details and offers no footnotes to back up his claims. The words were put into Old Hickory's mouth by Horace Greeley in 1864, nineteen years after jackson's death, just as the Holmes quote was put into the justice's mouth by journalists intent on good copy.") And one could add.
The veil lifts briefly when Smith writes on page 182, ".he [FDR] became carried away by his own rhetoric and claimed to have written the Haitian constitution, much as Al Gore once claimed to have invented the Internet."What a disappointment. If he's gonna throw down a notoriously debunked misquote like that, where else is he misleading us.
There was one passage in particular that cemented my mistrust of this author. georgia: 'John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.' There is absolutely no basis for the statement attributed to Jackson nor any reason for him to have made it.
And it's a curious thing because Smith takes us down the path of another misquote, attributed to Oliver Holmes where Smith appears to have done some homework: (page 311, "Holmes is alleged to have observed that Roosevelt had a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. The story was propagated principally by the literary critic Alexander Woollcott but is as apocryphal as Andrew Jackson's supposed comment after the Surpreme Court's 1832 decision in Worcester v.
just as journalists and novelists put the Al Gore quote into the Vice President's mouth intent on a juicier story. Largely the book is compelling and thoughtul and heavily researched, but I've come across a few other instances that arouse my suspicion and it sucks to read a book of this magnitude while holding the author's thruthfulness in doubt.
I've always been amazed at the way a really dogged researcher or writer can dig up new information on a subject. You'd think that, by now, the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt would have been told. But Jean Edward Smith, a prolific biographer of great American figures, has found new way to bring this fascinating man to life.The material about his pre-presidential years, including the onset of his polio and it's subsequent effect on everything about him; the trouble of his marriage to Eleanor; his teaming up with Louie Howe and the others who would eventually boost him to the White House, make for almost dramatic reading.While much of the presidential and war years are familiar to those who've read other FDR biographies, FDR is fascinating stuff, detailed, full of life, much like the subject himself.
It also strikes me as a balanced biography, and Smith doesn't pull punches when dealing with poorly thought-out actions.My disappointment is with how the book ends: when Roosevelt dies, the book pretty much ends there. Jean Edward Smith's bio of FDR is fine, readable biography that moves smoothly from a chronological perspective to a contextual one. It is largely told chronologically, but Smith won't hesitate to abandon that framework when a thread requires stringing together several events and viewpoints of others. There is no mention that WWII ended (of course,we know it did) or how his choice of Truman as a VP succeeded or not; no discussion of the fallout from his negotiations at Yalta (Eric Alterman, for instance, argues that FDR's misleading descriptions of the agreements there fueled the Cold War); no discussion of FDR's legacy. This is perfectly fine for Boswell when he wrote about Johnson a few years after Johnson's death, but JES had an opportunity for a historical review, and didn't take it.
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