Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Book Club Edition. Hardcover. xiv, 722 pages. Illustrations. Generally Bibliography. Chapter Bibliographies with Basic Book List. Index. Some wear to board edges and corners, pencil name inside front flyleaf. Book-of-the-Month-Club leaflet about this book laid in. The division between a man of ideals and a protector of presidential authority is the focus of a detailed study of Roosevelt during the difficult war years. James MacGregor Burns (August 3, 1918 – July 15, 2014) was an American historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies. After earning his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard,[10] Burns joined the faculty of Williams College in 1947, and taught there for nearly 40 years, retiring in 1986. He was the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1971 Burns received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in History and Biography for his work on America's 32nd president, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. Burns shifted the focus of leadership studies from the traits and actions of great men to the interaction of leaders and their constituencies as collaborators working toward mutual benefit. He was best known for his contributions to the transactional, transformational, aspirational, and visionary schools of leadership theory. Derived from a Kirkus review: This is the sequel to Burns's Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956), and it retains the basic theme of dualism in FDR between the grand man of principle and ideals and the pragmatic man of Realpolitik and practicality. A broad-based biography that also captures Roosevelt the many-sided man with facility and felicity, Burns's volume rates high on both readability and scholarship, and offers a fair accounting of the strengths and the shortcomings of Roosevelt's war leadership. Burns views the vacillations and hesitations on Roosevelt's part over America's international role as a reflection of the division in the American people themselves. Amidst all this ambivalence, Burns is sensitive to the important transitions occurring in the war years in American society, in the nature of the presidency, and in our relations with the Soviet Union. It is in Roosevelt's third term, rather than in the earlier New Deal years, that Burns finds "the foundations of modern presidential government," the broadening of presidential prerogatives and powers and the proliferation of the presidential staff. On the origins of the Cold War, he concludes that the decisive turn toward hostility and suspicion came in 1942-43 with the widening gap between promise and reality in the conduct of the war. On the home front, Burns demonstrates how federal power failed to channel the fast-running social and economic currents, especially in such matters as race relations. But all these subthemes relate back ultimately to the divisions in America. A rich historical portrait, supplemented with 40 cartoons and 16 pages of illustrations. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Franklin Roosevelt, Coalition Warfare, Cordell Hull, Harry Hopkins, Winston Churchill, FDR, Wendell Wilkie, Henry Stimson, Commander-in-Chief, White House, Presidency, African-Americans, James Brynes, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George C. M
ISBN: 0151788715
[Book #56191]
Price: $32.50