Had he not run
David Reynolds
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Roy Jenkins
Pan, 208 pp, £7.99, May 2005, ISBN 0 330 43206 0 - Franklin D. Roosevelt by Patrick Renshaw
Longman, 223 pp, US $16.95, December 2003, ISBN 0 582 43803 9 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black
Weidenfeld, 1280 pp, £17.99, October 2004, ISBN 0 7538 1848 5
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the longest-serving president in American history – 12 years and a month. He won four elections and forged a Democratic majority that lasted into the 1960s. When he took office in March 1933 the US banking system had collapsed and a quarter of the workforce was unemployed. When he died in April 1945 Americans were enjoying unprecedented prosperity and victory in the war had catapulted the country from the margins of international politics to the rank of global superpower. These were some of the most dramatic years in American history and FDR was always centre-stage. Cartoonists regularly depicted him striding into battle, walking a tightrope or slugging it out in the boxing ring. The image was one of perpetual motion, yet he could not move unaided: FDR was the wheelchair president.
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