One of today’s premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this... superlative volume, Jean Edward Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to provide an engrossing narrative of one of America’s greatest presidents.This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt’s restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life. Smith recounts FDR’s battles with polio and physical disability, and how these experiences helped forge the resolve that FDR used to surmount the economic turmoil of the Great Depression and the wartime threat of totalitarianism. Here also is FDR’s private life depicted with unprecedented candor and nuance, with close attention paid to the four women who molded his personality and helped to inform his worldview: His mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, formidable yet ever supportive and tender; his wife, Eleanor, whose counsel and affection were instrumental to FDR’s public and individual achievements; Lucy Mercer, the great romantic love of FDR’s life; and Missy LeHand, FDR’s longtime secretary, companion, and confidante, whose adoration of her boss was practically limitless. Smith also tackles head-on and in-depth the numerous failures and miscues of Roosevelt’s public career, including his disastrous attempt to reconstruct the Judiciary; the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans; and Roosevelt’s occasionally self-defeating Executive overreach. Additionally, Smith offers a sensitive and balanced assessment of Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust, noting its breakthroughs and shortcomings.Summing up Roosevelt’s legacy, Jean Smith declares that FDR, more than any other individual, changed the relationship between the American people and their government. It was Roosevelt who revolutionized the art of campaigning and used the burgeoning mass media to garner public support and allay fears. But more important, Smith gives us the clearest picture yet of how this quintessential Knickerbocker aristocrat, a man who never had to depend on a paycheck, became the common man’s president. The result is a powerful account that adds fresh perspectives and draws profound conclusions about a man whose story is widely known but far less well understood. Written for the general reader and scholars alike, FDR is a stunning biography in every way worthy of its subject.From the Hardcover edition.

Perhaps the twentieth century's most revered presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan could not seem more different as standard-bearers... of liberal and conservative revolutions. But, as John Sloan demonstrates, they were more similar than most people suppose. One rising out of the Great Depression and the self-defeating efforts of Herbert Hoover, the other out of the malaise of the 1970s and the failings of Jimmy Carter, both these presidents entered office with a mandate for change and oversaw a quantum shift in the national psyche. And while everyone takes their clashing visions for granted, Sloan demonstrates that these two very different presidents shared an ability to replace exhausted old leadership with a genuinely new vision. FDR and Reagan is a study of how old regimes unravel, how new ones are constructed, and how the political system is rejuvenated. Adapting noted presidential scholar Stephen Skowronek's framework, Sloan analyzes how two iconic "reconstructive" presidents redefined the country's fundamental philosophy, priorities, and policies as he weighs their similarities, differences, and impacts. He compares their lives, core policies, and leadership traits and shows that today's politics and policies are still heavily influenced by these key presidencies. Each of these men transformed the way Americans thought about the legitimate role of government, whether providing more security for citizens or stepping back from federal regulation. But, as Sloan reminds us, the new order never totally destroys the old--reconstructive presidents never completely eradicate the ideas and programs associated with the regime they replaced. Big business survived the New Deal, just as the welfare state weathered the Reagan Revolution. As with other transformative presidents before them, the words and deeds of FDR and Reagan have taken on nearly mythical significance; yet Americans remain torn between the economic security offered by one and the economic freedom championed by the other. Sloan's book helps readers see through this contradiction and better understand the decisive role of presidents in promoting national progress.

Power was at the heart of FDR's relationship with the media: the power of the nation's chief executive to control his public messages versus the power... of the free press to act as an independent watchdog over the president and the government. This compelling study points to Roosevelt's consummate news management as a key to his political artistry and leadership legacy.

FDR’S New Deal, which followed the 1929 stock market crash, was a hugely influential moment in the history of the United States, encompassing... everything from the arts to finance, labor to legislation, and some think it helped bring the country out of the Great Depression. Here, Tonya Bolden, writing in her trademark accessible style, creates a portrait of a time that changed American history both then and now.FDR’s First 100 Days and how the United States was changed by it then are closely examined, especially now. The 2009 financial situation is eerily mirrored by that of the late 1920s, and this is a perfect book to help teens understand history and its lasting impact on current events.

On thirty-one occasions during his presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on the radio to talk things over with the people of the United States.... Those fireside chats, characterized by a disarming frankness and an informal and conversational tone, represent an unprecedented presidential attempt to achieve intimacy with the nation. The American people listened, gathered around their radios in living rooms and kitchens across the country, as President Roosevelt discussed virtually every major problem facing the United States at home and abroad—including both the gravest domestic struggle since the Civil War and perhaps the most serious foreign crisis in the nation’s history. In the fireside chats the president touched upon all of the issues surrounding the depression and the New Deal, and upon the events, fears, and hopes that were part of the American experience of World War II.Editors Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy have gather the fireside chats tighter for the first time in a single volume and, by careful attention to recordings and stenographic reports, present the speeches exactly as Roosevelt spoke them. A general introduction discusses the importance of Roosevelt in American political history, the rise of the radio as a political tool, and the way Roosevelt, aided by speech writers and advisers, prepared and delivered the chat. Issues of the day are explored in two additional introductory essays—one describing the domestic situation Roosevelt confronted as he entered the White House in March 1933; the other surveying the international scene during the late 1930s, when Hitler, Mussolini, and Japanese militarists propelled the world toward a catastrophic war.To read the fireside chats a half century after they were delivered is to reenter a world of economic disaster, social reform, and international danger. It is also to hear, once again, the voice of one of the most skilled speakers and trusted leaders in American history.

This moving story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt s massive disability and the intense efforts to conceal it from the public has been widely acknowledged... as revising the understanding of Roosevelt s personality and decision making process. It is an intensely personal view of FDR. It traces his developments from the early years, his battle with polio, his fight for rehabilitation, his paralysis and his need to hide it, both in public and in private as well as the impact the paralysis and its cover-up had on his political career, his personality, and his relations with others. Now complete with a detailed account of the FDR Memorial and the struggle by disability advocates to have FDR depicted as he was in his wheelchair. Must reading for everyone interested in presidential history, disability history, and modern American history. A book not to be missed.

By personalizing the experiences of American slaves, Harriet Beecher Stowe s Uncle Tom s Cabin had a profound effect on public attitudes toward slavery... on the eve of the Civil War, but Stowe s narrative was not the whole story. Jo-Ann Morgan now reveals how prints and paintings of Uncle Tom and other characters in the novel also shaped public perceptions and how this visual culture had its own impact on history. Through illustrations in various editions of the book, advertisements for stage productions, paintings of favorite scenes, and even sheet music for Tom-inspired songs, Stowe s work took on a visual as well as a textual existence. Morgan explores the visual discourse generated by Uncle Tom s Cabin within the context of evolving social conditions and political events of nineteenth-century America to show how images associated with the text came to have lives of their own.

First published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is Hunter S. Thompson's savagely comic account of what happened to... this country in the 1960s. It is told through the writer's account of an assignment he undertook with his attorney to visit Las Vegas and "check it out." The book stands as the final word on the highs and lows of that decade, one of the defining works of our time, and a stylistic and journalistic tour de force. As Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in The New York Times, it has "a kind of mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer's An American Dream left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out."        This Modern Library edition features Ralph Steadman's original drawings and three companion pieces selected by Dr. Thompson: "Jacket Copy for Fear and Loath-ing in Las Vegas," "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan," and "The Kentucky Derby Is Deca-dent and Depraved."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page.  It is... also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.Now this cult classic of gonzo journalism is a major motion picture from Universal, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.

Book's in great reading condition; nice, tight pages with no markings or bent pages. Pages are starting to yellow on the edges, and inside both covers... there is yellowing as well. There are a couple of bends/lines on the front/back covers, as well as a few lines on the binding. There's a bit of shelf wear on the top/bottom edges of front/back covers. Sounds like a lot but it's not, I'm just very descriptive so that when a customer receives a book they've ordered from us they get exactly what was described. We ship fast, provide free delivery confirmation and guarantee customer satisfaction!

With the same drug-addled alacrity and jaundiced wit that made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a hilarious hit, Hunter S. Thompson turns his savage eye... and gonzo heart to the repellent and seductive race for President.He deconstructs the 1972 campaigns of idealist George McGovern and political hack Richard Nixon, ending up with a political vision that is eerily prophetic.A classic!

Twenty-four interconnected playlets describe events which took place in ordinary German households in the 1930s. They dramatize with clinical precision... the suspicion and anxiety experienced by ordinary people, particularly Jewish citizens, as Hitler's power grew.Written in exile in Denmark and first staged in 1938 it was inspired in part by his recent trip to Moscow where he had been researching tasks for the anti-Nazi effort. This Student Edition features an extensive introduction and commentary and includes: a chronology of the Brecht's life and work; a synopsis of each playlet; an introduction to the context of the play; commentary on themes, characters, style and language; a review of the play in performance; notes on individual words and phrases in the text, and questions for further study.