FDR!

March 1, 2006 5:09 PM

"President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I'm looking for the best biography on you", I said. But he did not know, so I am asking you.

There are a great many choices, and I do not want to invest time or money in reading inaccurate garbage. So, I ask, what is the best biography on the man? If there really isn't just one, then what are the best two?

posted by TwelveTwo to writing & language (6 comments total)

My politico-nerd boyfriend recommends That Man written by former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who was a bit of an insider in the FDR administration. He says it's written a bit roughly because it was put together by papers found after his death, but it's got better information than practically anyplace else.
posted by jessamyn at 5:23 PM on March 1, 2006

I enjoyed the recent Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black. A minor part of the current Condrad Black scandal was that he used Hollinger money to buy up a ton of source material.

If you want history intermixed with your biography, I like the three volume Age of Roosevelt by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., though it focuses really on the depression and ends in 1936. Freedom from Fear is a history of what one might consider the good stuff from 1929-1945.
posted by shothotbot at 5:52 PM on March 1, 2006

My husband's entire family adores No Ordinary Time, and they read a lot of biographies. It's not a full birth-to-death life story, but it has great insight into the man and his relationships.
posted by Sprout the Vulgarian at 5:57 PM on March 1, 2006

I've generally found that the one biography that gets referred to as definitive/excellent in whatever reading list I find it (and I concur) is James Macgregor Burns's two volume set: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox Vol. 1, 1882-1940 and Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom Vol. 2, 1940-1945.

Note that cramming all of FDR's life into one volume has been avoided by most biographers, but of those that have tried, Frank Friedel's Franklin D. Roosevelt : A Rendezvous with Destiny is probably the best distillation, based as it is on his underlying multi-volume work on Roosevelt.

I also second Freedom from Fear, and No Ordinary Time as excellent reads.
posted by bright cold day at 6:24 PM on March 1, 2006

A set will do, perhaps better?
posted by TwelveTwo at 6:39 PM on March 1, 2006

TwelveTwo: A set will do, perhaps better?

I think so. I had to read or source a bunch of Roosevelt biographies for a university thesis (which I now can't find ... grrr!), so I can safely say there's probably just too much ground to cover in FDR's life to get it into one volume sensibly (note: I haven't read Conrad Black's book). Aside from being the sitting President during the two greatest crises in 20th C American history, his formative years also invite detailed examination -- from his battle with polio through to his career in New York state politics. You can only bind so many pages.

If you're only interested in a given period of his life, however, (e.g. the war, the Depression) you'll find several excellent books for each of those periods that are basically FDR biographies by proxy.

Another multi-volume set I know of (but can't recommend, because I haven't in truth read enough of it to say if it's any good) is Kenneth Davis's. Four volumes covering his entire life. Might be a bit much for anyone to actually commit to reading, but if you're keen ...
posted by bright cold day at 1:31 AM on March 2, 2006