Recommend a good FDR bio

conrad black's huge one-volume bio got good reviews; i flipped through it a few times and i'd probably give it a try if i had a month without absolutely nothing else to do.

i've read a couple other books that focused on specific aspects of his presidency: a couple months ago i read "the defining moment" by jonathan alter, a book that just came out about FDR's first hundred days. it reads a bit like a long magazine article and it is fairly pro-roosevelt (though not worshipful), but it's a quick read and pretty insightful about the new deal. there's also "saving the jews" by robert rosen, a not-entirely-convincing attempt to wholly absolve FDR of ignoring the holocaust, which nevertheless makes some good points against the usual revisionist charges (bombing the camps wouldn't have done much; destroying the nazi regime as fast as possible was probably the only way to stop it).

FDR's a strange one: you could probably blame him for most of the bad tendencies that've plagued every post-WWII president, yet he still seems a heroic figure.

http://i.imgur.com/31mnk.jpg

what is the deal with part 3 of the edmund morris TR bio?

lmbo at GIS

what is the deal with part 3 of the edmund morris TR bio?

Beautifully written – he's almost a master stylist. I devoured it over the xmas break.

oh wait, it exists?

shit done passed me by. on my list.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s biography of FDR remains the benchmark. I've since read H.W. Brands' Traitor to His Class and Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment; the latter got renewed attention after Obama's election because it concentrates on the lame duck period when the banks closed and Hoover, desperate, tried and failed to get Roosevelt to endorse, well, anything.

http://media.nj.com/entertainment_impact_arts/photo/colonel-roosevelt-reivew-edmund-morrisjpg-da1eff07027aba15.jpg

I finished Conrad Black (yes, THAT Conrad Black)'s massive (1100-page) FDR bio. Surprisingly, surpassingly generous towards the president.

Is there a good book just on the New Deal, how it was passed, how it was understood by contemporaries, how it was received?

(would similarly like on the Great Society but that's a different topic)

william leuchtenburg's 'franklin d. roosevelt and the new deal' is a good political account that has a lot of detail on the nuts and bolts of the NRA, et al, but also leaves room for lots of fun anecdotal stuff. read it a long time ago, would recommend.

I hate the guy's presence as a Beltway oracle, but Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment is pretty good.

Does anyone have an opinion on the Kenneth Davis series? The first volume alone is 930 pages!

picked up the conrad black bio yesterday cuz it was $6 and i read bad things about traitor to his class and i thought it would be interesting to read a guy who puts in the occasional appearance on NRO but subscribes to the best-since-lincoln school; was amused by/smitten with this adorable excerpt from an essay about ancient egypt by 9-year-old FDR:

The kings made [the people] work so hard and gave them so little that by wingo! they nearly starved and by jinks! they had hardly any clothes so they died in quadrillions.

It's a much better book than his Nixon bio, which apart from wretched copy editing mistakes boasts execrable content editing. Apparently because he's Lord Black he can get away with dropping seven-syllable adjectives into sentences.

Traitor to His Class is good! I just finished his Ike bio.

Anyone watching the Ken Burns series? The first two were pretty good; the ones about TR's trip down the Amazon and FDR's polio diagnosis are supposed to be excellent.

As soon as I'm done with a few other things I'll spend a whole weekend watching them. Really excited.

@pareene
Teddy Roosevelt was a jerk who loved war and hunting because he was insecure about his effete city kid background and girly voice, the end

yeah, who needs national parks

I really like the Ken Burns National Parks book (and as a rule I hate this guy and won't watch his crap)

@pareene
Teddy Roosevelt was a jerk who loved war and hunting because he was insecure about his effete city kid background and girly voice, the end

Vee-dal beat Alex to it: "Theodore Roosevelt: American Sissy"

semi-joeks, guys

how is Burns handling TR's Churchillian racialist views? (no wonder Nixon liked him so much)

well, he spent time on the Brownsville incident, which surprised me.

what can you expect from a guy who was NYPD commish

@DennisThePerrin
If George Will can praise FDR's courage, then there's hope for those who will say anything to be on camera. #TheRoosevelts

he also praised FDR's wonderful smile

Supercilious clan of cousin-fuckers reigned for decades, the end. I really enjoyed a lot of this tbh, Ken Burns is so fucking tedious but I always end up binge watching it all.

I'm still on part 2, but love how the narrator goes out of his way to make TR sound like a dandy. Like before going to the Dakotas, had a fringed leather jacket made for him which he designed, and before going to Cuba, had Brooks Brothers make him a bunch of uniforms.

It didn't really go into that it was the 2nd yalta conference that ultimately killed him.

young paleocon gives a talk about FDR's opposition: they weren't all fascist fellow-travelers

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2015/04/the-socialist-party-and-the-old-right/

i can't verify the essential truth of this but it's interesting reading, especially the socialist vs communist split on the "war state"

Alfred, did you ever read a good FDR bio? Recommend a good FDR bio to me please

Traitor to his Class iirc

I read the third volume of Kenneth Davis' multi-volume set, as it happens.

I've been recommending Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time for years: Ira Katznelson's definitive account of how the Roosevelt administration's courtship of racist Southerners was necessary to pass the most progressive legislation in American history.

which is v good, my only criticism is that it ends very abruptly - "and then he died, THE END"!, with zero discussion of say, how WWII ended or his legacy.

xps

Traitor to His Class is a solid one-volume bio.

thank u both