Franklin Roosevelt
From charlesreid1
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| Title | Author | Year | Started | Finished | Opinion |
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| Title | Author | Year | Notes |
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| A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt | Geoffrey C. Ward | Idea came from www.awardannals.com
http://www.awardannals.com/wiki/A_First-Class_Temperament - Finalist for 1990 Pulitzer Prize (biography) From PresidentProfiles.com: A massive, gripping examination of how FDR was changed by his illness is Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1989). From Library Journal: This eagerly awaited second volume of Ward's work on FDR's early years is not a full-scale political biography, but more a human portrait of his character and personality. (Volume 1 is Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt 1882-1905, LJ 6/1/85.) Ward, an expert storyteller, begins with Roosevelt's honeymoon and concludes with his return to public life after his ordeal with infantile paralysis. While studies by Burns, Davis, and Freidel remain authoritative, Ward offers new insights into FDR's human side, especially the view that his life can be divided into two parts: before and after his tragic illness. Here too emerges a vivid portrait of Roosevelt's extraordinary family, friends, and enemies. There is excellent documentation and comprehensive analysis. The result is a fascinating, well-balanced, scholarly treatment and a significant contribution to the understanding of FDR. 889 pages | |
| Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage | Joseph Persico | Idea came from PresidentProfiles.com
In Marriott Library:
User Review: Intelligence professionals will be very disappointed by this book, citizens interested in Presidential approaches to intelligence, somewhat less so. The author's brilliant biography of William Casey, OSS Veteran and Director of Central Intelligence under President Ronald Reagan, was a much more satisfying book. What we have here is by and large a mish-mash of the works of others, together with an original composition on FDR's involvement in intelligence that is uneven--partly because the subject did not put much in writing, and partly because the author chose to rely primarily on secondary published sources. From the perspective of one interested in "Presidential intelligence," that is, how does a President manage various means of keeping informed, the book is a must read but also a shallow read. We learn that FDR was a master of deception and of running many parallel efforts, balancing them against one another. We learn that FDR was remarkably tolerant of amateurism and incompetence, while good at finding the gems these same loose but prolific intelligence endeavors could offer. Perhaps most importantly, we gain some insights into how Presidents, even when properly informed by intelligence (e.g. of Pearl Harbor in advance, or of the lack of threat from domestic Americans of Japanese descent) must yet "go along" and provide either inaction pending the public's "getting it", or unnecessary action (the internments) to assuage public concern. There are enough tid-bits to warrant a full reading of the book, but only for those who have not read widely in the literature of intelligence and/or presidential history. The British lied to the President and grossly exaggerated their intelligence capabilities, in one instance presenting a man "just back from behind the lines" when in fact he was simply on staff and lying for effect. We learn that the Department of State was twice offered, and twice declined, the lead on a global structure for collecting and processing intelligence. We learn that FDR himself concluded that Croatia and Serbia would never ever get along and should be separate countries. On the NATO side, we learn that Eisenhower went with bad weather and the invasion succeeded in part because of a successful deception and in part because of Ike's courage in going forward in the face of bad weather--fast forward to how weather incapacitates our high-technology today. Most interestingly, we learn that FDR finally approved Eisenhower as leader of Overload, in lieu of his favorite, General Marshall, in part because he recognized that the allied joint environment required a general and a politician in one man. This book is a hybrid, attempting to mesh presidential history with intelligence history, and perhaps this should gain the author some margin of tolerance. Unfortunately, in focusing on the relationships among the various intelligence principals and the president, he seriously passes over the enormous contributions of military as well as civilian and allied intelligence to the larger undertaking, and one is left with the narrow impression that American intelligence consisted largely of a number of self-serving clowns vying for Presidential favor. The flaws inherent in a Federal Bureau of Investigation dominated by J. Edgar Hoover, and the lack of cooperation between the FBI and other major intelligence activities that continues today, are noted throughout the book. Bottom line: worth buying and reading to gain insight into the challenges facing a President who can become isolated from reality by a corporate staff, but nowhere near the quality of Christopher Andrew's For the President's Eyes Only, or any of many good histories of espionage in World War II. 608 pages | |
| For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush | Christopher Andrew | Idea from a User Review on Amazon.
Covers intelligence-gathering under Presidents Washington, Taft, Wilson to Hoover, FDR, and Bush From Publishers Weekly: In this impressive survey, British historian Andrew (Her Majesty's Secret Service) assesses the extent to which U.S. secret intelligence has been influenced by the personalities and policies of our presidents. Although George Washington and Woodrow Wilson made good use of secret intelligence, the author shows there was no official American intelligence community until WWII, when Franklin D. Roosevelt relied more attentively on intelligence collection and analysis than any previous president. But, Andrew notes, only Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and George Bush showed a flair for using intelligence. Eisehower's wartime command experience exploiting covert resources served him well when he became chief executive; JFK presided over the most spectacular intelligence success of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis (the author, however, faults Kennedy for poor judgment in the Bay of Pigs invasion). As for George Bush, the first former CIA director elected to the White House, Andrew demonstrates that he had a better grasp of intelligence capabilities than any of his predecessors. Andrew's interpretations are often striking: "The most powerful government ever to fall as a result of covert action was the administration of Richard Nixon." |
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