Download or read book Harry Hopkins A Biography written by Henry H. Adams and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Iowa, Harry Lloyd Hopkins (1890-1946) graduated from Grinnell College and took a job at Christadora House, a social settlement house, in New York City where he later worked in the Bureau of Child Welfare and the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), before President Roosevelt asked him to run the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he built into the largest employer in the US. Hopkins was Secretary of Commerce from 1938 until 1940. From 1940 until 1943, he lived and worked in the White House. He enjoyed close relationships with FDR and with Eleanor Roosevelt. During World War II, he oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as FDR’s personal envoy to Churchill and Stalin, had a key role in shaping Allied military strategy. Hopkins was considered a potential successor to FDR as President until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer. He died at the age of 55. “The author is the first since Robert Sherwood... to complete a full biography of Harry Hopkins. He has added significant detail, based on new sources, while confirming Sherwood’s portrait of a brave and loyal aide who ranked with George Marshall in his contribution to victory in World War II. The three most influential foreign policy advisers to Presidents in this century were Colonel House for Wilson, Hopkins, and Henry A. Kissinger. Hopkins was more loyal than House, less innovative than Kissinger, but equal to both in his ability to get things done. He died in 1946, exhausted and in debt.” — Gaddis Smith, Foreign Affairs “[A] fascinating, well-written book... Hopkins’s influence on national social welfare policy developments lasted only a relatively short time, from 1932 to 1938 when he was appointed Secretary of Commerce. Then the events that were to lead to World War II were shaping up, and Roosevelt chose Hopkins to serve as his personal ambassador. That part of the story is completely absorbing, and the reader will find it well worth his time as general history and intimate biography.” — F. R. B., Social Service Review “This first detailed biography of Harry Hopkins is essential reading to one interested in the domestic and foreign policies of Franklin Roosevelt. Hopkins was closer and had a greater impact on Roosevelt during his presidency than any other single individual. The book is well-written, interesting, and thoroughly documented... [Hopkins’] role as head of the Works Progress Administration is skillfully outlined. The importance of his work during World War II in acting as Roosevelt’s liaison with both Churchill and Stalin cannot be underestimated... Despite the obviously important matters of substance in which Hopkins was involved, the book does not neglect his personal life, domestic problems, and poor health. He comes through it all as a very interesting individual with whom one would have enjoyed working.” — Victor B. Levit, American Bar Association Journal

Download or read book Harry Hopkins written by Christopher D. O'Sullivan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most controversial figures of the New Deal Era, Harry Hopkins elicited few neutral responses from his contemporaries. Millions admired him and believed the New Deal agencies he headed had rescued them from despair, but many of President Roosevelt’s enemies passionately hated him and derisively called him the “world’s greatest spender” or FDR’s “left-wing Rasputin.” Hopkins was a paradoxical man: a trained social worker who enjoyed the company of the “swells,” attending cocktail parties, and gambling at the track. Once the quintessential New Dealer, during World War II he single-mindedly devoted himself to aiding the allies, downplaying his previous commitment to social reform and rupturing his friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, among others. He was sickly and underweight, yet a profane and blunt-spoken man, lacking in any outward affectations of charisma. Still, FDR curiously saw Hopkins, who moved into the White House on the very day that Germany invaded France in May 1940, as his most suitable successor, the New Deal’s legatee, and a possible Democratic nominee for president. Much of what FDR accomplished would never have been possible without Hopkins—whom the press described as not only FDR’s most trusted official, but also his most intimate personal friend. Analyzing Hopkins’ role in wartime diplomacy and his personal relationships with the twentieth-century’s most indispensable leaders, historian Christopher O’Sullivan offers enormous insight into the most controversial aspects of FDR’s foreign policy, the New Deal Era, and the beginning of modern American history.

Download or read book Harry Hopkins written by NA NA and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1912 to 1940, social worker Harry Hopkins committed himself to the ideal of government responsibility for impoverished Americans. This look at Hopkins' life and social work career broadens our understanding of the political and cultural currents that led to the Social Security Act of 1935, the bedrock of the American welfare state. Hopkins' experiences as an advocate and administrator of work relief and widows' pensions in New York City during the Progressive Era informed his contribution to welfare legislation during the New Deal years. Written by his granddaughter June Hopkins, this book not only clarifies the emergence of welfare policy but sheds considerable light on the present welfare debate. It also illuminates the life of one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Harry Hopkins written by George McJimsey and published by . This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Jewish First Wife Divorced written by Ethel Gross and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish First Wife, Divorced collects the correspondence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal Relief Administrator, Harry Hopkins, and his Jewish first wife, Ethel Gross. These letters--flirtatious and fond, quietly argumentative and terse--reveal the significant influence of Progressivism on Harry Hopkins's political ideology and also the unique challenges for a professionally ambitious Jewish immigrant woman living in the early twentieth century.

Download or read book No Ordinary Time written by Doris Kearns Goodwin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.

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 FDR and the Creation of the U N written by Townsend Hoopes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive account, two prize-winning historians explain how the idea of the United Nations was conceived, debated, and revised, first within the U.S. government and then by negotiation with its major allies in World War II. 28 illustrations.

Download or read book Witness to History written by Robert Hopkins and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The New Deal written by Michael Hiltzik and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From first to last the New Deal was a work in progress, a patchwork of often contradictory ideas.

Download or read book Traitor to His Class written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 913 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A brilliant evocation of one of the greatest presidents in American history by the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War "It may well be the best general biography of Franklin Roosevelt we will see for many years to come.” —The Christian Science Monitor Drawing on archival material, public speeches, correspondence and accounts by those closest to Roosevelt early in his career and during his presidency, H. W. Brands shows how Roosevelt transformed American government during the Depression with his New Deal legislation, and carefully managed the country's prelude to war. Brands shows how Roosevelt's friendship and regard for Winston Churchill helped to forge one of the greatest alliances in history, as Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin maneuvered to defeat Germany and prepare for post-war Europe. Look for H.W. Brands's other biographies: THE FIRST AMERICAN (Benjamin Franklin), ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN WHO SAVED THE UNION (Ulysses S. Grant), and REAGAN.

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 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”—Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE • ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN), “DEFINING” (LITHUB), AND “BEST” (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS • WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Entertainment Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Financial Times • New York • Independent (U.K.) • Times (U.K.) • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Download or read book The Second Most Powerful Man in the World written by Phillips Payson O'Brien and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of Franklin Roosevelt's most trusted and powerful advisor, Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief “O'Brien's biography at last gives Leahy his due.”—John Lewis Gaddis • “Fascinating… greatly enriches our understanding of Washington wartime power.”—Madeleine Albright • “Beautifully written and thoroughly researched.”—Douglas Brinkley • “Transforms our understanding of America's wartime decision-making.”—Hew Strachan Aside from FDR, no American did more to shape World War II than Admiral William D. Leahy--not Douglas MacArthur, not Dwight Eisenhower, and not even the legendary George Marshall. No man, including Harry Hopkins, was closer to Roosevelt, nor had earned his blind faith, like Leahy. Through the course of the war, constantly at the president's side and advising him on daily decisions, Leahy became the second most powerful man in the world. In a time of titanic personalities, Leahy regularly downplayed his influence, preferring the substance of power to the style. A stern-faced, salty sailor, his U.S. Navy career had begun as a cadet aboard a sailing ship. Four decades later, Admiral Leahy was a trusted friend and advisor to the president and his ambassador to Vichy France until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Needing one person who could help him grapple with the enormous strategic consequences of the war both at home and abroad, Roosevelt made Leahy the first presidential chief of staff--though Leahy's role embodied far more power than the position of today. Leahy's profound power was recognized by figures like Stalin and Churchill, yet historians have largely overlooked his role. In this important biography, historian Phillips Payson O'Brien illuminates the admiral's influence on the most crucial and transformative decisions of WWII and the early Cold War. From the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and France, to the allocation of resources to fight Japan, O'Brien contends that America's war largely unfolded according to Leahy's vision. Among the author's surprising revelations is that while FDR's health failed, Leahy became almost a de facto president, making decisions while FDR was too ill to work, and that much of his influence carried over to Truman's White House.

Download or read book The Roosevelt Presence written by Patrick J. Maney and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-09-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only 20th-century president consistently ranked by historians with the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln. His leadership in the dark hours of the Depression and the Second World War has endowed him in the eyes of many with an aura of greatness. This book reexamines Roosevelt's life and legacy--for good and for ill. 16 illustrations.

Download or read book George Marshall written by David L. Roll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary career of General George C. Marshall—America’s most distinguished soldier–statesman since George Washington—whose selfless leadership and moral character influenced the course of two world wars and helped define the American century “I’ve read several biographies of Marshall, but I think [David] Roll’s may be the best of the bunch.”—Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review • “Powerful.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Enthralling.”—Andrew Roberts • “Important.”—William I. Hitchcock • “Majestic.”—Susan Page • “Engrossing.”—Andrew J. Bacevich • “Judicious.”—Walter Isaacson • “Definitive.”—Kirkus Winston Churchill called him World War II's "organizer of victory." Harry Truman said he was "the greatest military man that this country ever produced." Today, in our era of failed leadership, few lives are more worthy of renewed examination than Marshall and his fifty years of loyal service to the defense of his nation and its values. Even as a young officer Marshall was heralded as a genius, a reputation that grew when in WWI he planned and executed a nighttime movement of more than a half million troops from one battlefield to another that led to the armistice. Between the wars he helped modernize combat training and re-staffed the U.S. Army's officer corps with the men who would lead in the next decades. But as WWII loomed, it was the role of army chief of staff in which Marshall's intellect and backbone were put to the test, when his blind commitment to duty would run up against the realities of Washington politics. Long seen as a stoic, almost statuesque figure, he emerges in these pages as a man both remarkable and human thanks to newly discovered sources. Set against the backdrop of five major conflicts—two world wars, Palestine, Korea, and the Cold War—Marshall's education in military, diplomatic, and political power, replete with their nuances and ambiguities, runs parallel with America's emergence as a global superpower. The result is a defining account of one of our most consequential leaders.

Download or read book The Washington War written by James Lacey and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Team of Rivals for World War II—the inside story of how FDR and the towering personalities around him waged war in the corridors of Washington, D.C., to secure ultimate victory on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific. The Washington War is the story of how the Second World War was fought and won in the capital’s halls of power—and how the United States, which in December 1941 had a nominal army and a decimated naval fleet, was able in only thirty months to fling huge forces onto the European continent and shortly thereafter shatter Imperial Japan’s Pacific strongholds. Three quarters of a century after the overwhelming defeat of the totalitarian Axis forces, the terrifying, razor-thin calculus on which so many critical decisions turned has been forgotten—but had any of these debates gone the other way, the outcome of the war could have been far different: The army in August 1941, about to be disbanded, saved by a single vote. Production plans that would have delayed adequate war matériel for years after Pearl Harbor, circumvented by one uncompromising man’s courage and drive. The delicate ballet that precluded a separate peace between Stalin and Hitler. The almost-adopted strategy to stage D-Day at a fatally different time and place. It was all a breathtakingly close-run thing, again and again. Renowned historian James Lacey takes readers behind the scenes in the cabinet rooms, the Pentagon, the Oval Office, and Hyde Park, and at the pivotal conferences—Campobello Island, Casablanca, Tehran—as these disputes raged. Here are colorful portraits of the great figures—and forgotten geniuses—of the day: New Dealers versus industrialists, political power brokers versus the generals, Churchill and the British high command versus the U.S. chiefs of staff, innovators versus entrenched bureaucrats . . . with the master manipulator, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at the center, setting his brawling patriots one against the other and promoting and capitalizing on the furious turf wars. Based on years of research and extensive, previously untapped archival resources, The Washington War is the first integrated, comprehensive chronicle of how all these elements—and towering personalities—clashed and ultimately coalesced at each vital turning point, the definitive account of Washington at real war and the titanic political and bureaucratic infighting that miraculously led to final victory.