(btw the most entertaining FDR portrait is Gore Vidal's in Washington DC and The Golden Age
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Monday, 7 August 2006 22:17 (seventeen years ago) link
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.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 7 August 2006 23:08 (seventeen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 7 August 2006 23:09 (seventeen years ago) link
― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 00:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 03:14 (seventeen years ago) link
― Collardio Gelatinous (collardio), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 03:28 (seventeen years ago) link
― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 03:31 (seventeen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 06:35 (seventeen years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/31mnk.jpg
― Princess TamTam, Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:08 (thirteen years ago) link
what is the deal with part 3 of the edmund morris TR bio?
― caek, Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:29 (thirteen years ago) link
lmbo at GIS
― ENBB, Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:30 (thirteen years ago) link
Beautifully written – he's almost a master stylist. I devoured it over the xmas break.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:34 (thirteen years ago) link
oh wait, it exists?
― caek, Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:35 (thirteen years ago) link
shit done passed me by. on my list.
― caek, Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:36 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:36 (thirteen years ago) link
http://media.nj.com/entertainment_impact_arts/photo/colonel-roosevelt-reivew-edmund-morrisjpg-da1eff07027aba15.jpg
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:37 (thirteen years ago) link
I finished Conrad Black (yes, THAT Conrad Black)'s massive (1100-page) FDR bio. Surprisingly, surpassingly generous towards the president.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 March 2011 14:16 (thirteen years ago) link
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)
― Euler, Friday, 4 March 2011 18:29 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 4 March 2011 18:49 (thirteen years ago) link
I hate the guy's presence as a Beltway oracle, but Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment is pretty good.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 March 2011 19:01 (thirteen years ago) link
Does anyone have an opinion on the Kenneth Davis series? The first volume alone is 930 pages!
― john. a resident of chicago., Sunday, 24 July 2011 15:40 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 7 September 2012 16:25 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 September 2012 16:37 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 16 September 2014 16:17 (nine years ago) link
As soon as I'm done with a few other things I'll spend a whole weekend watching them. Really excited.
― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 16 September 2014 17:01 (nine years ago) link
@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
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 17 September 2014 16:31 (nine years ago) link
yeah, who needs national parks
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 17 September 2014 18:28 (nine years ago) link
I really like the Ken Burns National Parks book (and as a rule I hate this guy and won't watch his crap)
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 17 September 2014 18:32 (nine years ago) link
Vee-dal beat Alex to it: "Theodore Roosevelt: American Sissy"
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 17 September 2014 18:34 (nine years ago) link
semi-joeks, guys
how is Burns handling TR's Churchillian racialist views? (no wonder Nixon liked him so much)
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 17 September 2014 18:40 (nine years ago) link
well, he spent time on the Brownsville incident, which surprised me.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 17 September 2014 19:00 (nine years ago) link
what can you expect from a guy who was NYPD commish
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 17 September 2014 20:34 (nine years ago) link
@DennisThePerrin If George Will can praise FDR's courage, then there's hope for those who will say anything to be on camera. #TheRoosevelts
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 19 September 2014 16:40 (nine years ago) link
he also praised FDR's wonderful smile
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 19 September 2014 16:41 (nine years ago) link
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.
― xelab, Sunday, 21 September 2014 21:19 (nine years ago) link
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.
― naus, Sunday, 21 September 2014 21:31 (nine years ago) link
It didn't really go into that it was the 2nd yalta conference that ultimately killed him.
― xelab, Sunday, 21 September 2014 21:42 (nine years ago) link
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"
― goole, Monday, 10 August 2015 18:53 (eight years ago) link
Alfred, did you ever read a good FDR bio? Recommend a good FDR bio to me please
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Monday, 2 March 2020 20:20 (four years ago) link
Traitor to his Class iirc
― Οὖτις, Monday, 2 March 2020 20:22 (four years ago) link
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.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 2 March 2020 20:23 (four years ago) link
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.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 2 March 2020 20:23 (four years ago) link
xps
Traitor to His Class is a solid one-volume bio.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 2 March 2020 20:35 (four years ago) link
thank u both
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Monday, 2 March 2020 20:37 (four years ago) link