FDR: A Biography

"FDR guided America through the Great Depression and was commander-in-chief—and, in my view, a very good one—for the United States when it formally entered World War Two. FDR made a series of decisions that were controversial at the time, but that in retrospect, I think can be seen to have been the correct ones. It is perhaps not fully appreciated, but in the interval between the fall of France in June 1940 and the formal American entry into World War Two (after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941) the American public wanted Germany to be defeated but did not want to do the fighting itself. Franklin Roosevelt found a way, against domestic skepticism and opposition, to send military and economic assistance, first to Great Britain and then, after June 22, 1941, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, to the Soviet Union. American public opinion was very anti-communist, so it was difficult for Roosevelt to put these measures through, but the assistance that the United States gave, first to Britain and then to the Soviet Union, enabled these countries to keep fighting. That was crucial for the ultimate outcome of the war. There are many biographies of FDR. Probably the standard one is the multi-volume work by Frank Freidel. I like the Morgan book because it’s a single volume and it’s very well-written. It’s not by a professional historian, but by a journalist who does, however, use documents. So for a manageable—although not short—one-volume biography, the Morgan book is a good one."