Franklin D Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born into privilege on the Hudson River in 1882 and rose to become the only American president elected four times. This biography follows him from a sheltered childhood and early political apprenticeship through the personal catastrophe of polio, his return to public life as governor of New York, and his landslide election in 1932 amid the worst economic crisis in the nation’s history.

As president, Roosevelt launched the New Deal—an unprecedented expansion of federal power that created Social Security, put millions to work, regulated banking and industry, and permanently altered the relationship between government and citizens. He then led the United States from isolation into the Second World War, forging the Grand Alliance with Britain and the Soviet Union, mobilizing the American economy into the “arsenal of democracy,” and guiding the nation to victory over the Axis powers.

The book examines both his achievements and his failures: the court-packing fight, the internment of Japanese Americans, the limits of his civil-rights record, and the controversies of Yalta. It portrays the complex partnership with Eleanor Roosevelt, the physical and political discipline required to conceal his disability, and the lasting transformation of the modern presidency.

Roosevelt died in April 1945, weeks before the war’s end, having reshaped American government and the country’s role in the world more profoundly than any president since Lincoln.