Kennedy and Roosevelt
The Uneasy Alliance
by Michael Beschloss
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Pub Date Aug 09 2016 | Archive Date Sep 09 2016
Description
The tempestuous relationship between a towering American president and the founder of an American political dynasty—and its impact on history.
When Franklin Roosevelt ran for president in 1932, he won support from the little-known, Boston-born financier and ex-Hollywood mogul Joseph Kennedy. The politician and the businessman formed a partnership that helped to bring Roosevelt to the White House, where he fought the Great Depression and institutionalized the New Deal.
But the mutual admiration born of Roosevelt and Kennedy’s shared victories, including the latter’s stint as the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he worked to clean up Wall Street, was severely tested as Nazism rolled across Europe. Eager to protect the lives of his four sons and to see that his family would retain the wealth and social status he had fought so hard to achieve, Kennedy desperately wanted America to stay out of World War II. As Roosevelt’s ambassador to Great Britain, he enthusiastically supported the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler. By 1940, his isolationism forced an angry showdown with his boss at the Roosevelt mansion at Hyde Park. “I never want to see that son of a bitch again as long as I live,” the president told his wife, Eleanor.
After America entered World War II, Kennedy retreated from the spotlight and turned to the political ambitions of his sons. By 1960, when Franklin Roosevelt Jr. campaigned for John F. Kennedy to win the presidency, the complex relationship between their two families had come full circle. To tell this story, bestselling author Michael Beschloss has drawn on crucial sources that had never been seen by other historians, such as Joseph Kennedy’s private diaries and his unpublished diplomatic memoir. Beschloss also interviewed a number of Roosevelt’s White House aides, as well as three of the president’s sons.
Kennedy and Roosevelt was Beschloss’s first book, and has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a “fascinating” account of “the complex, ambiguous relationship of two shrewd, ruthless, power-hungry men.”
When Franklin Roosevelt ran for president in 1932, he won support from the little-known, Boston-born financier and ex-Hollywood mogul Joseph Kennedy. The politician and the businessman formed a partnership that helped to bring Roosevelt to the White House, where he fought the Great Depression and institutionalized the New Deal.
But the mutual admiration born of Roosevelt and Kennedy’s shared victories, including the latter’s stint as the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he worked to clean up Wall Street, was severely tested as Nazism rolled across Europe. Eager to protect the lives of his four sons and to see that his family would retain the wealth and social status he had fought so hard to achieve, Kennedy desperately wanted America to stay out of World War II. As Roosevelt’s ambassador to Great Britain, he enthusiastically supported the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler. By 1940, his isolationism forced an angry showdown with his boss at the Roosevelt mansion at Hyde Park. “I never want to see that son of a bitch again as long as I live,” the president told his wife, Eleanor.
After America entered World War II, Kennedy retreated from the spotlight and turned to the political ambitions of his sons. By 1960, when Franklin Roosevelt Jr. campaigned for John F. Kennedy to win the presidency, the complex relationship between their two families had come full circle. To tell this story, bestselling author Michael Beschloss has drawn on crucial sources that had never been seen by other historians, such as Joseph Kennedy’s private diaries and his unpublished diplomatic memoir. Beschloss also interviewed a number of Roosevelt’s White House aides, as well as three of the president’s sons.
Kennedy and Roosevelt was Beschloss’s first book, and has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a “fascinating” account of “the complex, ambiguous relationship of two shrewd, ruthless, power-hungry men.”
Advance Praise
“This brisk dip into the American past . . . is an absorbing book about many kinds of reality—how, for example, one friend may outgrow another, and how fear distorts judgment.” —Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker
“I must record my astonishment that so fine and readable a book on so complex a man was written by one only 24 years old . . . We’ll be hearing more of Michael Beschloss.” —Richard J. Walton, The Washington Post Book World
“Solidly researched and impressively set down . . . A sobering and fascinating lesson in the ways of power.” —The Nation
“This book is a real credit, not only to the author . . . but also to the academic discipline. . . . Mr. Beschloss has performed a notable service in disclosing the weaknesses and dangers of an excessively private approach to public life.” —Leonard Silk, The New York Times
“This brilliant study is a tour de force. . . . It succeeds in unraveling with the skill of a novelist the complex relationship between these two highly complex men. Once started, it is hard to lay aside.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Beschloss has told this complex story carefully and judiciously . . . With this book, he has given himself an auspicious starting point.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Star
“Written with authority, this well-researched work reveals the complex motives and values at work among men exercising power at the highest level.” —Publishers Weekly
“The possibility that this is the last you will be hearing of Michael Beschloss is about as remote as the chance that he would have flunked history at Williams.” —Newsday
“I must record my astonishment that so fine and readable a book on so complex a man was written by one only 24 years old . . . We’ll be hearing more of Michael Beschloss.” —Richard J. Walton, The Washington Post Book World
“Solidly researched and impressively set down . . . A sobering and fascinating lesson in the ways of power.” —The Nation
“This book is a real credit, not only to the author . . . but also to the academic discipline. . . . Mr. Beschloss has performed a notable service in disclosing the weaknesses and dangers of an excessively private approach to public life.” —Leonard Silk, The New York Times
“This brilliant study is a tour de force. . . . It succeeds in unraveling with the skill of a novelist the complex relationship between these two highly complex men. Once started, it is hard to lay aside.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Beschloss has told this complex story carefully and judiciously . . . With this book, he has given himself an auspicious starting point.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Star
“Written with authority, this well-researched work reveals the complex motives and values at work among men exercising power at the highest level.” —Publishers Weekly
“The possibility that this is the last you will be hearing of Michael Beschloss is about as remote as the chance that he would have flunked history at Williams.” —Newsday
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781504039352 |
| PRICE | |
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