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.
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