Download or read book Rendezvous with Destiny written by Michael Fullilove and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable untold story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the five extraordinary men he used to pull America into World War II In the dark days between Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent five remarkable men on dramatic and dangerous missions to Europe. The missions were highly unorthodox and they confounded and infuriated diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. Their importance is little understood to this day. In fact, they were crucial to the course of the Second World War. The envoys were magnificent, unforgettable characters. First off the mark was Sumner Welles, the chilly, patrician under secretary of state, later ruined by his sexual misdemeanors, who was dispatched by FDR on a tour of European capitals in the spring of 1940. In summer of that year, after the fall of France, William “Wild Bill” Donovan—war hero and future spymaster—visited a lonely United Kingdom at the president’s behest to determine whether she could hold out against the Nazis. Donovan’s report helped convince FDR that Britain was worth backing. After he won an unprecedented third term in November 1940, Roosevelt threw a lifeline to the United Kingdom in the form of Lend-Lease and dispatched three men to help secure it. Harry Hopkins, the frail social worker and presidential confidant, was sent to explain Lend-Lease to Winston Churchill. Averell Harriman, a handsome, ambitious railroad heir, served as FDR’s man in London, expediting Lend-Lease aid and romancing Churchill’s daughter-in-law. Roosevelt even put to work his rumpled, charismatic opponent in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie, whose visit lifted British morale and won wary Americans over to the cause. Finally, in the aftermath of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Hopkins returned to London to confer with Churchill and traveled to Moscow to meet with Joseph Stalin. This final mission gave Roosevelt the confidence to bet on the Soviet Union. The envoys’ missions took them into the middle of the war and exposed them to the leading figures of the age. Taken together, they plot the arc of America’s trans¬formation from a divided and hesitant middle power into the global leader. At the center of everything, of course, was FDR himself, who moved his envoys around the globe with skill and élan. We often think of Harry S. Truman, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and George F. Kennan as the authors of America’s global primacy in the second half of the twentieth century. But all their achievements were enabled by the earlier work of Roosevelt and his representatives, who took the United States into the war and, by defeating domestic isolationists and foreign enemies, into the world. In these two years, America turned. FDR and his envoys were responsible for the turn. Drawing on vast archival research, Rendezvous with Destiny is narrative history at its most delightful, stirring, and important.

Download or read book United States Ship Franklin D Roosevelt CVA 42 written by Franklin D. Roosevelt (Aircraft carrier : CVA-42) and published by . This book was released on 1964* with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Franklin Delano Roosevelt written by Roy Jenkins and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-11-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In acute, stylish prose, Jenkins tackles all of the nuances and intricacies of FDRUs character--a masterly work by the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Churchill" and "Gladstone."

Download or read book Franklin Delano Roosevelt written by Conrad Black and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 1329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franklin Delano Roosevelt stands astride American history like a colossus, having pulled the nation out of the Great Depression and led it to victory in the Second World War. Elected to four terms as president, he transformed an inward-looking country into the greatest superpower the world had ever known. Only Abraham Lincoln did more to save America from destruction. But FDR is such a large figure that historians tend to take him as part of the landscape, focusing on smaller aspects of his achievements or carping about where he ought to have done things differently. Few have tried to assess the totality of FDR's life and career. Conrad Black rises to the challenge. In this magisterial biography, Black makes the case that FDR was the most important person of the twentieth century, transforming his nation and the world through his unparalleled skill as a domestic politician, war leader, strategist, and global visionary -- all of which he accomplished despite a physical infirmity that could easily have ended his public life at age thirty-nine. Black also takes on the great critics of FDR, especially those who accuse him of betraying the West at Yalta. Black opens a new chapter in our understanding of this great man, whose example is even more inspiring as a new generation embarks on its own rendezvous with destiny.

Download or read book FDR and the US Navy written by Edward J. Marolda and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1998-08-14 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a lifelong love for the United States Navy. Inspired as a youth by the US Fleet's dramatic impact on the global stage, and its use overseas by his illustrious cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin quite naturally focused his eyes on the sea. FDR and the US Navy presents the work of prominent biographers and historians who analyzed Franklin D. Roosevelt's long, close, and eventful association with the United States Navy, in war and peace, from the turn of the century to the end of World War II. The contributors show how as President during the 1930s, FDR endeavoured with naval leaders, not always successfully, to build a combat-capable fleet and to deter the aggressor nations of Europe and Asia. The essays argue that one of Franklin Roosevelt's greatest achievements was his direction as Commander in Chief of the US Navy and the other American armed forces during World War II, when the very survival of the nation was at stake. This book is the product of a day-long conference, entitled 'Franklin D. Roosevelt and the US Navy' that was held on October 22, 1996 at the US Navy Memorial Foundation's Heritage Center on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. It is both a powerful tribute and an important historical work on FDR.

Download or read book Sailor in the White House written by Robert F Cross and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Naval Documents of the American Revolution written by United States. Naval History Division and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Threshold of War written by Waldo Heinrichs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990-03-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the first comprehensive treatment of the American entry into World War II to appear in over thirty-five years, Waldo Heinrichs' volume places American policy in a global context, covering both the European and Asian diplomatic and military scenes, with Roosevelt at the center. Telling a tale of ever-broadening conflict, this vivid narrative weaves back and forth from the battlefields in the Soviet Union, to the intense policy debates within Roosevelt's administration, to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, to the precarious and delicate negotiations with Japan. Refuting the popular portrayal of Roosevelt as a vacillating, impulsive man who displayed no organizational skills in his decision-making during this period, Heinrichs presents him as a leader who acted with extreme caution and deliberation, who always kept his options open, and who, once Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union stalled in July, 1941, acted rapidly and with great determination. This masterful account of a key moment in American history captures the tension faced by Roosevelt, Churchill, Stimson, Hull, and numerous others as they struggled to shape American policy in the climactic nine months before Pearl Harbor.

Download or read book U S S Franklin D Roosevelt written by United States. Congress. House and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book United States Ship Franklin D Roosevelt written by Franklin D. Roosevelt (Aircraft carrier : CVA-42) and published by . This book was released on 1960* with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Roosevelt s Navy written by James Tertius de Kay and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FDR as never seen before: His formative years as Woodrow Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, evolving from political neophyte to visionary leader. This is the story of a very different Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the one traditionally found in the history books. This is a much younger, untested, pre-polio FDR, learning the complexities of gaining and exercising power as Woodrow Wilson’s ambitious Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He arrives in Washington as an inexperienced political amateur possessed of little more than a famous name, but by the time he leaves the Navy eight years later he will have transformed himself into a seasoned professional, wise to the ways of power, a visionary ready and eager to take his place on the world stage. FDR’s early years in Washington also include the most tumultuous period in his personal life, when, caught in a difficult marriage, he is forced to choose between his own personal happiness and his political ambitions. He must deal at close quarters with Congress, with the Administration, and with the military. Lastly, but crucially, he confronts himself, learning something about his potential, his limitations, and his growing ambition to become president of the United States.

Download or read book Franklin D Roosevelt written by Jeffrey W. Coker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief, thorough introduction to the life and times of the most influential and effective president in modern America, this volume is ideal for students researching the Great Depression or World War II. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the best and most influential presidents in U.S. history. Successfully guiding the stricken nation through the Great Depression and World War II, FDR also forever changed the office of the President of the United States and the future course of American politics. The scion of a wealthy upstate New York family, and cousin to President Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt was beloved by ordinary Americans and reviled by the elite as a class traitor for his New Deal policies. Here, FDR's life from childhood to midlife struggle with crippling polio to his death in office in 1944 is detailed, offering both personal and public perspectives. Starting with his privileged prep school and Harvard upbringing, readers follow this masterful politician's development as New York senator and Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I. During a brief retreat from the public eye, Roosevelt is struck by polio and regroups personally and professionally. Next comes his triumphant return to national politics and his election to president in 1932. The pivotal years during which he was elected president an unprecedented four times during the Depression and World War II round out the final third of the book. An annotated bibliography and index conclude the work.

Download or read book Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 1945 written by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Franklin Delano Roosevelt written by Alan Brinkley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-30 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "No president since the founders has done more to shape the character of American government," notes Alan Brinkley in this magnificent biography of America's thirty-second president. "And no president since Lincoln has served through darker or more difficult times. Roosevelt thrived in crisis. It brought out his greatness, and his guile. It triggered his almost uncanny ability to communicate effectively with people of all kinds. And at times, it helped him excoriate his enemies, and to revel in doing so." This brilliant, compact biography chronicles Franklin Delano Roosevelt's rise from a childhood of privilege to a presidency that forever changed the face of international diplomacy, the American party system, and the government's role in global and domestic policy. Brinkley, the National Book Award-winning New Deal historian, provides a clear, concise introduction to Roosevelt's sphinx-like character and remarkable achievements. In a vivid narrative packed with telling anecdotes, the book moves swiftly from Roosevelt's youth in upstate New York--characterized by an aristocratic lifestyle of trips to Europe and private tutoring--to his schooling at Harvard, his brief law career, and his initial entry into politics. From there, Brinkley chronicles Roosevelt's rise to the presidency, a position in which FDR remained until death, through an unparalleled three-plus terms in office. Throughout the book, Brinkley elegantly blends FDR's personal life with his professional one, providing a lens into the President's struggles with polio and his somewhat distant relationship with the first lady. Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the United States through the worst economic crisis in the nation's history and through the greatest and most terrible war ever recorded. His extraordinary legacy remains alive in our own troubled new century as a reminder of what bravery and strong leadership can accomplish.

Download or read book The War Messages of Franklin D Roosevelt December 8 1941 to April 13 1945 written by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D Roosevelt Humanity on the defensive 1942 written by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Franklin D Roosevelt written by Frank Freidel and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-11-29 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed one-volume biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, praised by Doris Kearns Goodwin as "brilliant...a magnificently readable saga."