Nothing to Fear: The Best FDR Biographies

Traitor opens with FDR perusing Sunday’s headlines, one of which spells out the “prospect of war in the Pacific [and] realities of war in the Atlantic and Europe,” as he reflects on the unpleasant probabilities. All the while, the first Japanese planes are descending upon Pearl Harbor. Such detail is memorably applied throughout Bran’s erudite biography. Divided into thirds, the first section is probably the most enlightening for FDR scholars. Exploring his childhood, education and early political career, w’re offered understanding into how a man from high birth would eventually create a Great Depression agenda geared towards the disenfranchised. Shrewd but relatable with an aptitude for alliances and machinations, FDR  was a completely fascinating paradox.

Some critiques are inevitable. From Chapter One — “How Could Such Bright, Compassionate People Be Wrong?” — Powell is a forthright critic of FD’s New Deal strategies. All chapters, titled with a question, lend to straightforward (sometimes rhetorical) criticisms such as “How Did New Deal Policies Cause the Depression of 1938?” He argues the New Deal, authorizing billions of dollars for relief and public works projects, sent a “disproportionate amount” of cash not to poor Southern states but to the West, where FDR could garner electoral favor. Using empirical data, layman’s language of taxation, federal pricing policies and some unsettling Depression revelations, it contradicts and balances conventional FDR portraits.

Meacham recognizes that the personal is often more gripping than the political. The adage of “know a man through the company he keeps” has great effect here. The book sings with empathy, intrigue and an insider’s perspective on two legendary statesmen of the last century. Churchill was born eight years earlier and an ocean away, but both shared appreciation for “tobacco, strong drink, history, the sea, battleships, hymns, pageantry, patriotic poetry, high office and hearing themselves talk.” Franklin and Winston will make any historian of the “two lions” starry-eyed.

Robert Dallek’s Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions that have attracted all his biographers: how did a man who came from so privileged a background become the greatest presidential champion of the country’s needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster revolutionary changes in the country’s economic and social institutions?