Excellent! I really enjoyed this book and learned quite a bit.
Covers FDR well, though it is a little on the softer side regarding anything negative, but pretty well balanced. ( )

Polls consistently rate FDR in the top three, if not at the very top of the list of our best presidents. FDR is an important person in our Country's history, and this book goes into great detail discussing him, his life, and his presidency. Especially interesting at this time of our current economic downturn are the similarities between the political discussions described in the book as Roosevelt's Administration tried to move the economy in the 1930s, compared to the near-identical discussions being held in the first month of the Obama Administration. Some of the arguments on both side of the aisle during FDR's time sound nearly identical to arguments being made today. I also developed a renewed appreciation of the significance of the Russian efforts and sacrifices on the eastern front during the War years. These were but a few of many interesting aspects of this detailed book.
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It was good to get a lot of gaps filled in... FDR was responsible for a lot of things that are still relevant today. I wish it had been way more critical, though. The author is in love with FDR. ( )

5615. Traitor to His Class The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H. W. Brands (read 11 Mar 2019) This is the sixth book by H. W. Brands I have read. It was published in 2005 and thus is newer than other FDR biographies I have read, such as the two volumes by Geoffrey Ward (which I read 15 Oct 1993 and 12 Sep 1995), Conrad Black's biography of FDR (which I read 4 Apr 2004) James McGregor Burns' 2 volume biography (which I read in May 2006) and Jean Edward Smith's biography (read 8 Aug 2009). I found this book consistently good reading. It is pleasingly chronological which is always a feature I enjoy in a biography. Both the accounts of the New Deal years and of the war years are done with just the right amount of detail. Brands' approval of FDR is not slavish and he points out the flaws but overall his recital of the events is fair and in accord with what is true. The account of his death is poignant and took me back to that time, which I remember so vividly. ( )

Brands presents a serviceable and highly readable biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt. No real new ground is broken here, but it is pretty good. Brands does have a tendency, with much of academe, to laud and whitewash FDR of his faults, however. FDR's affairs are lightly explained away. His ineptitude at actually getting rid of the Great Depression is glossed over. Guess what? FDR and the New Deal did nothing to get rid of the Great Depression. All the agencies, all the welfare, all the dole, all the money, it hired some people temporarily and built some nice monuments and parks, but the economy did not recover until 1941 (when the US was building war material and supplying our future war allies). Brands, like many a liberal, covers this up by saying that at least things were getting better. The New Deal was a racket, which many newer books will show. For instance FDR's Folly which not only shows the economy did not get better but that much of the money went not to those who needed it most but the constituencies Democrats most needed to "buy" for votes. Amity Shlaes's great The Forgotten Man shows, from a more social side, how the New Deal really didn't fix anything. The 1937 Roosevelt Recession? Only on one measly page, and spliced into war stuff so it doesn't seem important, does Brands admit that FDR did not fix the economy (p. 536): "...in private he [FDR] was honest enough to recognize the New Deal's central failure—to end the depression itself." The Tehran and Yalta conferences are covered well, but FDR's fawning belief in Stalin and his belief that he could "control" Stalin are glossed over. Finally, whereas almost all other historical figures are brought to task for their failures at encourage equal civil rights for black Americans (even, as of late, progressive hero Woodrow Wilson is being called to the carpet), FDR is here given a pass. Not willing to stir up a hornets nest among the southern Democrats (who were progressives, Brands, not conservatives, as you say a million times—they wanted and voted for progressive, statist, government-growing policies), FDR did no pushing on the issue of civil rights. He didn't even support a bill that would make lynching a federal crime. Tsk. But, this is all elided by Brands. No muck must encrust the crown of the sainted, liberal-progressive hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who saved us with the New Deal and defeated the perfidious Hitler.

All-in-all, a good biography of FDR, a bit fawning (but almost all of them are). Well-written, lucid, good coverage. ( )