And the roles of Lucy Mercer, Missy LeHand and FDR’s children are surprisingly under-weighted.

Eleanor – compelling in her own right – appears only sporadically and seems to frustrate (rather than enhance) the narrative. The biography ends on a strong note with an outstanding chapter reviewing Roosevelt’s legacy and his impact on American (and world) history.īut for all the detail Brands provides in this weighty tome, relatively little effort is expended covering Roosevelt’s family and “friends.” His mother, who by many accounts was doting and highly supportive of Franklin, is treated relatively harshly.

Brands’s review of these years – from his commentary relating to the events which sparked World War II through his captivating review of the Yalta Conference – is excellent. The most successful aspect of the biography is its three-hundred page coverage of Roosevelt’s service as a wartime president. As a consequence, readers lacking a thorough background in Roosevelt’s era rarely feel out of touch with the landscape in which he operated. Important moments – particularly during FDR’s presidency – are not just described, they are explained. One of Brands’s most conspicuous talents is his ability to not only describe the individual events in his subject’s life but also to provide robust historical context for his narrative. Discussion of President Roosevelt’s domestic agenda (with the New Deal as its key component) is clear, thorough and well-balanced.

His two-term gubernatorial career, however, is surprisingly under-covered. It is organized into three major sections and its 824 pages leave no major aspect of Roosevelt’s life unexplored – but it focuses on the various phases of his life with different levels of intensity.Ĭoverage of Roosevelt’s early years and pre-presidency is solid (but not exceptional) and Brands provides more background on FDR’s retreat at Warm Springs than I’ve encountered elsewhere. This lengthy single-volume biography of FDR is detailed, comprehensive and magisterial. His most recent biography “ Reagan: The Life” was published in 2015. Brands is a professor at the University of Texas and the author of more than two dozen books (including six presidential biographies). Brands’s 2008 biography of FDR and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. “ Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt” is H.W.

Hw brands traitor to his class