Sign in
Holiday Gift Guide
Books
Kids
Popular
Authors & Events
Gifts & Deals
Audio
Sign In
Look Inside
Sep 09, 2014 | ISBN 9780804173339 Buy
Sep 09, 2014 | ISBN 9780804173346 Buy
Also available from:
Available from:
Sep 09, 2014 | ISBN 9780804173339
Sep 09, 2014 | ISBN 9780804173346
Before Pearl Harbor, before polio and his entry into politics, FDR was a handsome, pampered, but strong-willed youth, the center of a rarefied world. In Before the Trumpet, the award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward transports the reader to that world—Hyde Park on the Hudson and Campobello Island, Groton and Harvard and the Continent—to recreate as never before the formative years of the man who would become the 20th century’s greatest president. Here, drawn from thousands of original documents (many never previously published), is a richly-detailed, intimate biography, its central figure surrounded by a colorful cast that includes an opium smuggler and a pious headmaster; Franklin’s distant cousin, Theodore and his remarkable mother, Sara; and the still-more remarkable young woman he wooed and won, his cousin Eleanor. This is a tale that would grip the reader even if its central character had not grown up to be FDR.
Geoffrey C. Ward, historian and screenwriter, is the author of sixteen books, including A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He… More about Geoffrey C. Ward
“Suffused with magic . . . a wonderful book.” —John Lukacs, The Philadelphia Enquirer“An engrossing biography . . . Magnificent social history . . . a triumph of scholarly detective work.”—The New Yorker“The freshest and most penetrating study of the young FDR.” —Chicago Sunday Tribune“The texture is . . . richer, the detail more finely tuned than in any other portrait.” —The New York Times Book Review“Quite the best thing I have ever read about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. The wonder is that [it] unearths so much new and revealing material—letters, conversations, insights . . . appealing and inspiring.”—Atlanta Constitution
Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network
Stay in Touch
By clicking Sign Up, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
