“Just when you thought you knew everything about Franklin D. Roosevelt, think again. Joseph E. Persico [is] one of America’s finest historians. . . . You can’t properly understand FDR the man without reading this landmark study.”—Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University 
“Persico’s exploration of FDR’s emotional life is fascinating.”—USA Today
In...

Presents a social history of the United States in 1940, along with a moment-by-moment account of Roosevelt's leadership and the private lives of the president and First Lady, whose remarkable partnership transformed America.

The United States is not a preternaturally inward-looking nation, and isolation is not the natural disposition of Americans. The real question is not whether Americans are prone to isolation or engagement, but how their engagement with the world has evolved, how events have made the United States a superpower, and how these developments have been guided by political leadership. Indeed, the great debates on foreign affairs in American history have...

Based on recently released documents, one of the nation's most celebrated historians reveals one of the little-known secrets of World War II--FDR's and Truman's sometimes shocking plans for a postwar Germany.

"From the New York Times bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy and The Lincoln Conspiracy, The Nazi Conspiracy tells the little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill FDR, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the height of the second World War. In 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt wanted one thing: a face-to-face meeting with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This meeting of the...

Acclaimed biographer Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to narrate the epic life of the president who, more than any other individual, changed the relationship between the American people and their government. We see how Roosevelt's energy, intellect, and personal magnetism permitted him to master countless challenges. Smith recounts FDR's battles with polio and physical disability, and how they helped...

Fullilove demonstrates that America's global primacy in the second half of the twentieth century was enabled by the earlier work of Roosevelt and his five extraordinary representatives from 1939-1941. Together these men and their president took the United States into the war and, by defeating domestic isolationists and foreign enemies, into the world.

Frank, outspoken and revealing, here is the truth about two of the most controversial political figures in modern America: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jim Farley. These are the unvarnished facts concerning the man who put Roosevelt into the White House and built up one of the most brilliantly efficient party organizations that America has ever known. Mr. Farley writes of Roosevelt the politician-a human being with human failings-and not a demigod. The...

FDR as never seen before: His formative years as Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy, evolving from political neophyte to visionary leader   This is the story of a very different Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the one usually found in the history books. This is a much younger, untested FDR, a physically active, pre-polio FDR, as seen during his early years in Washington, learning the complexities of gaining and exercising power as

...