Becoming FDR

Becoming FDR PDF Author: Jonathan Darman
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812978781
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
“An illuminating account of how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s struggles with polio steeled him for the great struggles of the Depression and of World War II.”—Jon Meacham “A valuable book for anyone who wants to know how adversity shapes character. By understanding how FDR became a deeper and more empathetic person, we can nurture those traits in ourselves and learn from the challenges we all face.”—Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with an abundance of charm and charisma, he seemed destined for high office. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically. Those qualities, so essential to his success as president, were skills he acquired during his seven-year journey through illness and recovery. Becoming FDR traces the riveting story of the struggle that forged Roosevelt’s character and political ascent. Soon after contracting polio in 1921 at the age of thirty-nine, the former failed vice-presidential candidate was left paralyzed from the waist down. He spent much of the next decade trying to rehabilitate his body and adapt to the stark new reality of his life. By the time he reemerged on the national stage in 1928 as the Democratic candidate for governor of New York, his character and his abilities had been transformed. He had become compassionate and shrewd by necessity, tailoring his speeches to inspire listeners and to reach them through a new medium—radio. Suffering cemented his bond with those he once famously called “the forgotten man.” Most crucially, he had discovered how to find hope in a seemingly hopeless situation—a skill that he employed to motivate Americans through the Great Depression and World War II. The polio years were transformative, too, for the marriage of Franklin and Eleanor, and for Eleanor herself, who became, at first reluctantly, her husband's surrogate at public events, and who grew to become a political and humanitarian force in her own right. Tracing the physical, political, and personal evolution of the iconic president, Becoming FDR shows how adversity can lead to greatness, and to the power to remake the world.

Becoming FDR

Becoming FDR PDF Author: Jonathan Darman
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812978781
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Get Book Here

Book Description
“An illuminating account of how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s struggles with polio steeled him for the great struggles of the Depression and of World War II.”—Jon Meacham “A valuable book for anyone who wants to know how adversity shapes character. By understanding how FDR became a deeper and more empathetic person, we can nurture those traits in ourselves and learn from the challenges we all face.”—Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with an abundance of charm and charisma, he seemed destined for high office. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically. Those qualities, so essential to his success as president, were skills he acquired during his seven-year journey through illness and recovery. Becoming FDR traces the riveting story of the struggle that forged Roosevelt’s character and political ascent. Soon after contracting polio in 1921 at the age of thirty-nine, the former failed vice-presidential candidate was left paralyzed from the waist down. He spent much of the next decade trying to rehabilitate his body and adapt to the stark new reality of his life. By the time he reemerged on the national stage in 1928 as the Democratic candidate for governor of New York, his character and his abilities had been transformed. He had become compassionate and shrewd by necessity, tailoring his speeches to inspire listeners and to reach them through a new medium—radio. Suffering cemented his bond with those he once famously called “the forgotten man.” Most crucially, he had discovered how to find hope in a seemingly hopeless situation—a skill that he employed to motivate Americans through the Great Depression and World War II. The polio years were transformative, too, for the marriage of Franklin and Eleanor, and for Eleanor herself, who became, at first reluctantly, her husband's surrogate at public events, and who grew to become a political and humanitarian force in her own right. Tracing the physical, political, and personal evolution of the iconic president, Becoming FDR shows how adversity can lead to greatness, and to the power to remake the world.

FDR

FDR PDF Author: Jean Edward Smith
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812970497
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 914

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - "A model presidential biography... Now, at last, we have a biography that is right for the man" - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World One of today’s premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this superlative volume, Jean Edward Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to provide an engrossing narrative of one of America’s greatest presidents. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt’ s restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life. Smith recounts FDR’s battles with polio and physical disability, and how these experiences helped forge the resolve that FDR used to surmount the economic turmoil of the Great Depression and the wartime threat of totalitarianism. Here also is FDR’s private life depicted with unprecedented candor and nuance, with close attention paid to the four women who molded his personality and helped to inform his worldview: His mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, formidable yet ever supportive and tender; his wife, Eleanor, whose counsel and affection were instrumental to FDR’s public and individual achievements; Lucy Mercer, the great romantic love of FDR’s life; and Missy LeHand, FDR’s longtime secretary, companion, and confidante, whose adoration of her boss was practically limitless. Smith also tackles head-on and in-depth the numerous failures and miscues of Roosevelt’ s public career, including his disastrous attempt to reconstruct the Judiciary; the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans; and Roosevelt’s occasionally self-defeating Executive overreach. Additionally, Smith offers a sensitive and balanced assessment of Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust, noting its breakthroughs and shortcomings. Summing up Roosevelt’s legacy, Jean Smith declares that FDR, more than any other individual, changed the relationship between the American people and their government. It was Roosevelt who revolutionized the art of campaigning and used the burgeoning mass media to garner public support and allay fears. But more important, Smith gives us the clearest picture yet of how this quintessential Knickerbocker aristocrat, a man who never had to depend on a paycheck, became the common man’s president. The result is a powerful account that adds fresh perspectives and draws profound conclusions about a man whose story is widely known but far less well understood. Written for the general reader and scholars alike, FDR is a stunning biography in every way worthy of its subject.

FDR and the American Crisis

FDR and the American Crisis PDF Author: Albert Marrin
Publisher: Ember
ISBN: 0385753624
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The definitive biography of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt for young adult readers, from National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin, is a must-have for anyone searching for President's Day reading. Brought up in a privileged family, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had every opportunity in front of him. As a young man, he found a path in politics and quickly began to move into the public eye. That ascent seemed impossible when he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. But with a will of steel he fought the disease—and public perception of his disability—to become president of the United States of America. FDR used that same will to guide his country through a crippling depression and a horrendous world war. He understood Adolf Hitler, and what it would take to stop him, before almost any other world leader did. But to accomplish his greater goals, he made difficult choices that sometimes compromised the ideals of fairness and justice. FDR is one of America’s most intriguing presidents, lionized by some and villainized by others. National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin explores the life of a fascinating, complex man, who was ultimately one of the greatest leaders our country has known.

FDR and Lucy

FDR and Lucy PDF Author: Resa Willis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136785477
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

FDR's Body Politics

FDR's Body Politics PDF Author: Davis W. Houck
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 158544233X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Franklin Roosevelt instinctively understood that a politician unable to control his own body would be perceived as unable to control the body politic. He took care to hide his polio-induced lameness both visually and verbally. Through his speeches—and his physical bearing when delivering them—he tried to project robust health for himself while imputing disability, weakness, and even disease onto his political opponents and their policies. In FDR's Body Politics: The Rhetoric of Disability, Davis W. Houck and Amos Kiewe analyze the silences surrounding Roosevelt's disability, the words he chose to portray himself and his policies as powerful and health-giving, and the methods he used to maximize the appearance of physical strength. Drawing on never-before-used primary sources, they explore how Roosevelt and his advisors attacked his most difficult rhetorical bind: how to address his fitness for office without invoking his disability. They examine his broad strategies, as well as the speeches Roosevelt delivered during his political comeback after polio struck, to understand how he overcame the whispering campaign against him in 1928 and 1932. The compelling narrative Houck and Kiewe offer here is one of struggle against physical disability and cultural prejudice by one of our nation's most powerful leaders. Ultimately, it is a story of triumph and courage—one that reveals a master politician's understanding of the body politic in the most fundamental of ways.

FDR's Deadly Secret

FDR's Deadly Secret PDF Author: Steven Lomazow
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1586489062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The authors re-examine the final years of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and reveal that the president and his staff covered up a stunning secret, that, at the time of his death, FDR suffered from a skin cancer that had spread to his brain and abdomen and could have affected his mental function and ability to make decisions during World War II. Reprint.

FDR's Funeral Train

FDR's Funeral Train PDF Author: Robert Klara
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0230105939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The April 1945 journey of FDR's funeral train became a thousand-mile odyssey, fraught with heartbreak and scandal. As it passed through the night, few of the grieving onlookers gave thought to what might be happening behind the Pullman shades, where women whispered and men tossed back highballs. Inside was a Soviet spy, a newly widowed Eleanor Roosevelt, who had just discovered that her husband's mistress was in the room with him when he died, all the Supreme Court justices, and incoming president Harry S. Truman who was scrambling to learn secrets FDR had never shared with him. Weaving together information from long-forgotten diaries and declassified Secret Service documents, journalist and historian Robert Klara enters the private world on board that famous train. He chronicles the three days during which the country grieved and despaired as never before, and a new president hammered out the policies that would galvanize a country in mourning and win the Second World War.

Sailor in the White House

Sailor in the White House PDF Author: Robert F Cross
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Now available in paperback, Robert F. Cross’ Sailor in the White House remains one of the most interesting and intimate books about Franklin D. Roosevelt. Secret Service agents, family, and old sailing pals share stories about their days on the water with America’s greatest seafaring president. The author argues that the skills required to be a good sailor are the same skills that made FDR a successful politician: the ability to alter courses, make compromises, and shift positions as the situation warrants. This perspective on Roosevelt shows how his love of the sea shaped his presidency, and its unique look remains refreshing even today.

Sons and Fathers

Sons and Fathers PDF Author: John Crosby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317975804
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Father-son relationships can be notoriously difficult. Often fractious, sometimes hostile, and occasionally destructive, the issue of authority is negotiated by fathers and sons in a range of styles. In this fascinating new book, John Crosby describes the filial relationships of 20 historical figures to illustrate the different ways they related to their fathers, and what this can tell us about love, authority and the wider family context. Sons and Fathers is an approach to understanding this son-father conflict based on early life experience rather than upon psycho-historian or psycho-biographical material and theorizing. Each vignette is designed to be read as a biographical account, but is bookended by a section reflecting on how each man’s relationship to his father can be understood in the context of key developmental theories, in particular those of Eric Erikson and Murray Bowen’s family system theory. The book also includes an extended introduction to both theorists for those unfamiliar with their work, as well as a discussion of the role of corporal punishment as a method of disciplining children. From Michael Jackson to Bing Crosby, Joseph Stalin to John F Kennedy, this is a uniquely accessible but insightful book that will appeal to both general readers as well as students of Developmental Psychology across the lifespan, Family Studies, Marriage and Family therapy, and related subjects. It will also appeal to professionals working in the area, including social workers, counsellors and therapists.

FDR And The Dime

FDR And The Dime PDF Author: Jo D. Tanenbaum
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 1478763485
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
The only four-term president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, led the U.S. to victory in World War II, led the country in the Depression, and conquered polio with the March of Dimes. Americans defeated polio by sending nickels, pennies, and dimes to Washington for research in the fight against polio. ‘Polio' was the scare word in the early 1900s just as ‘cancer' is the scare word today. This book tells the story of why and how Roosevelt founded the Society for Infantile Paralysis and the world-renowned Roosevelt Institute for Rehabilitation in Warm Springs, Georgia.