Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

This 888 page book is a scholarly and thorough book about the life of FDR. It gives the background of his family, a detailed look at his upbringing and family life though school as a privileged member of the upper class of America. It gives a close look at his social life and love life of his twenties, his marriage to Eleanor and various intimacies throughout his life. It details the control of Sara, his mother over his life financially, and the beginnings of FDR’s ambitions and goals. The author shows how his exuberance and personality slowly but surely emerged., His political involvement began to rise at a time when America had changed from an agrarian to a manufacturing country with property in the hands of a few, and communication was with telegraph, telephone, and radio. Immigrants from all over the world bringing their various religious beliefs and hope for a better life, also brought more obvious class differences, often unequal. When FDR was inaugurated in 1933 one quarter of the country was unemployed and hunger and poverty where everywhere, effecting loss of homes and property and leaving a sense of despair. He immediately began to change the economy, taking bold steps and choosing good men to help, creating the New Deal. As the country makes a turn-around, he is faced with rising world problems; and war in Europe slowly but surely effects the country, driving the isolationists to a minority and bringing the US into a world power of its own. Throughout the book the reader sees him developing great leadership, making bold decisions and communicating to the American people through radio—his Fireside Chats. The author describes and quotes conversations with many leaders; especially interesting are those of the Stalin, FDR and Churchill as they discuss strategy and post war plans for disarmament, boundaries, the United Nations and other necessary reorganizational issues. The readers follow his life as he contracts polio in his first term and fights back, keeping his presidency from a wheel chair most of the time throughout his third term, unprecedented, and into the beginning fourth and last to his death in 1945. For the inquiring reader, included in lengthy and thorough appendix are footnotes and references.

This great biography was one of the greatest reading experiences of my life, I’m prejudiced. I was born in 1933shortly after FDR assumed the presidency and my first recollection in life was seeing him in the flesh. The president was my family’s savior according to my grandfather; in the nick of time, his New Deal panoply of programs there was just enough support from the federal government to save us from going under, and he and the rest of the adults swore to that fact till the days they departed this coil. Until the great day itself, I had no knowledge of the great man, but every moment since whenever he becomes the subject of conversation, I represent the traitor to his class’s standing in the present members as the man who saved us from destitution and other forms of ruin. On a day in autumn of 1936, I was told we were going to see the greatest living human being come to our city, Brockton, MA. We to ask for our support in his quest for a second term – my mother, my grandfather and – I suppose other members of the clan - walked up the road to Main St. and joined the largest assembly of people I had ever seen or could conjure. We were packed like sardines with all eyes facing north toward Boston. Flags were waving and everyone was smiling. Suddenly a corps of police motorcyclists appeared, their engines purring loudly. My grandfather hoisted me to his shoulders, and he and my mother shouted to me, “There he is, there he is!” And I saw him; I did. In my mind I can still recreate the scene. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I embellished what I saw; today I see the great smile with a cigarette holder jauntily clenched bearing a trailing tail of gray. But I don’t know if I saw those details or added them later. BUT I SAW FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT THAT DAY. And I will never forget it. It was a religious experience for us as my Grampa hopped beneath me and demanded that, “I see him!” When I was eleven years all Pall settled over us, our hero was dead! Dead on the cusp of victory in the greatest war in the history of humanity. My mother and I wept, and the men barely controlled their own Niagaras. I sat down and composed a letter to President Truman begging him not to change anything. I have no idea whether the adults sent it on to the White House, but I it wrote in all seriousness. Professor Brand’s great biography brought it all back. I’ve read bios of many great people, but Brand’s tops them all for me. In part III, The Fate of the World, Brand had me in the room with FDR as he made some of the most fateful decisions in the history of human existence – and I agonized with him on each. For anyone wishing to get the feel for the time of The Great Depression and World War II which has given the globe more than eighty years without war between the great powers, this a book to savor. Read it; treasure it’s a masterpiece.

H.W. Brands's admiration of FDR as a human being and as a politician is scarcely concealed. Here's his summary encomium from the last chapter of his biography, describing the reaction of Americans to the President's death: "[His presidency] had been a remarkable accomplishment, reflecting a unique bond between the President and the American people. They put their faith in Roosevelt because he put his faith in them. He believed in democracy -- in the capacity of ordinary Americans, exercising their collective judgement, to address the ills of that afflicted their society. He refused to rely on the invisible hand of the marketplace, for the compelling reason that during his lifetime the invisible hand had wreaked very visible havoc on millions of unoffending Americans. He refused to accept that government invariably bungled whatever it attempted, and his refusal inspired government efforts that had a tremendous positive effect on millions of marginal farmers, furloughed workers, and struggling merchants..." If that encomium seems more rhetorical than analytical to you, you're not alone. This journalistic biography is best at portraying personalities and personality clashes, and weakest at historical contextualization. In attempting to be moderately detached, Brands details FDR's weaknesses, frivolities, and errors -- his overweening ambition, his marital cruelties and follies, his manipulative relationships with friends -- but the overall picture is extremely engaging. It's easy to see how Roosevelt overcame both his advantages and disadvantages to become the master politician and popular icon that he undeniably was. The narrative breaks rather schematically into three sections: Roosevelt's youth and political activities before 1932, his two terms of office during the Depression, and his wartime years. Of the three 'acts,' the first is the most carefully constructed and the clearest in intention. Brands depict FDR as the product of extraordinary privilege and insulation from the lives of ordinary folk. At the same time, he links Roosevelt's development to the example of his predecessor and relative, Theodore, demonstrating fairly convincingly that FDR's economic and social platform derived more from Progressivism than from any ideology of the Democratic Party. It was his illness and paralysis, Brands argues, that brought FDR into contact with and empathy for the less-privileged Americans, and that forged his strengths as a leader in crises. Brands's focus during FDR's first two terms in the White House is on his political challenges -- his dealings with his own party and with Congress; his relationships with his aides and advisors, and the occasional rivalries between those aides; his election strategies, etc. Brands keeps all these juggling pins aloft with some skill, but unfortunately I was hoping for a different kind of analysis of these years, more in fulfillment of the iimplications of the book's title. Brands is at his most shallow in placing the "New Deal" in the context of American social history. Alas, that's what I was looking for, a coherent summary of the very real and very permanent changes in American society than accompanied the New Deal, with some answer to such questions as: 1. What was new about the Deal? 2. Whose Deal was it really? 3. How much did the New Deal embody Roosevelt's own vision? Brands portrays FDR's confrontations with Labor leader John L Lewis, for instance, entirely in terms of personalities and passing events, but the changes in labor relations and labor law during the New Deal years were among the most important developments of the era, and the underlying question is to what degree can those changes be considered accomplishments of Roosevelt's "betrayal" of his class. America arrived at the end of World War I still maintaining the class assumptions of common law master-servant relationships, but by the 1930s America was no longer a land of apprentices, master craftsmen, and yeoman farmers. Instead it was a nation of wage earners, and it was FDR's great opportunity to shape new perceptions and new laws to suit such new realities. That's what the NRA was about - not merely market recovery - and that's what FDR's confrontation with the 'nine old men' of the Supreme Court amounted to. The victories that FDR achieved with his liberal appointment to the Court, victories which were partly consolidated by his third electoral triumph and by the democratizing effect of his plans for benefits for returning soldiers, were in effect a "new and better" deal for ordinary Americans. Frankly, too much attention has been paid to the 'recovery' issues of the New Deal -- particularly with 75% or more of Americans keeping their jobs and doing rather well on the basis of price deflation -- and too little to the transformation of America from the hierarchical Gilded Age portrayed by novelists like Edith Wharton and Henry James to the bland but prosperous and egalitarian America post WW2. Brands establishes in his prologue, where he foreshadows the trauma of Pearl Harbor, that his deepest adulation of Roosevelt is reserved for his war leadership. Once again, the narrative focuses on interpersonal confrontations, chiefly between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, and to a lesser degree between Roosevelt and his generals. Oddly enough, however, by the time Brands gets to his chosen topic, his writing has become less cogent and carefully ordered. Many of the severest critics of this book, and by implication of Roosevelt himself as a war leader, are dismayed by the portrayal of Roosevelt's amiability toward Stalin. The critics howl that Roosevelt was naive, or that he was secretly sympathetic to communism, and that Brands should have revealed that ideological 'treachery.' What Brands does reveal is that Roosevelt had every bit as much trouble with Churchill's motivations as with Stalin's. Honestly, whether you side with those who denounce FDR's policies toward the USSR, or with those who applaud his wartime leadership, you won't find much to support your bias in this entertaining but superficial biography.

Love it, well written sharing information from his youth and family. Highly recommended

In the landscape of historical books there is a plethora of long gone forests expended in describing the life and times of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I have read two rather distinctive and thorough accounts of FDR being Conrad Black's "Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom" and Doris Kearns Goodwin's "No Ordinary Time". Both these books were outstanding works and gave excellent perspectives on FDR's life. However, what H.W. Brands has done is to answer the ultimate question of this privileged patrician born to the equivalence of "American Aristocracy". That rather simple journalistic question is "why". When using "why" in the context of why as a privileged son of American capitalism did he utilize the auspices of government to help all socio economic classes? As stated by the Author, FDR was living the high structured and favored life of high class Americans in which he held legislative offices in New York State and later performed the duties of assistant navy secretary in the Wilson Administration. His goal was the ultimate prize for men of his social rank, that being the Presidency of the United States. His desire was to emulate and even surpass the accomplishments of his distant cousin Teddy Roosevelt. Here's where Brands' take provides an interesting and divergent path. The Author goes into detail of why FDR became the "President for all the people". It was in 1921 that FDR contracted polio and life as he knew it changed not only for his life but in essence later for the lives of all Americans. While convalescing in rural Georgia at Warm Springs, FDR began to realize by firsthand knowledge how people lived lives constricted by limited economic resources. When FDR asked about poverty and was answered that low crop prices affected the whole economic scene he realized the first hand problems of ordinary people. The facts became apparent to FDR as to how people were manipulated by the upper economic classes. By living with and talking with the locals, FDR came to identify with the economic entrapments of the lower and middle classes. It's as if he received a cold slap in the face. What Brands has done in this wonderful treatise is to give us the true founding of FDR's political philosophy. Brands spends 2/3 of the book expounding on the formation of this political philosophy onto the "New Deal" domestic policies. Later in the book, we get to know how FDR guided our country through the slippery slopes of isolationism and onward to being a world leader in World War II. In all, Brands brings us closer to understanding FDR. In reality, FDR still remains an enigma. We understand him, we think, do we? This reminds me of the Cheshire cat in "Alice in Wonderland", now we see him, now we don't. Where is that cat?? Great insight! The cat gave it 10 Stars!!

I am new to the works of H.W. Brands, having only read his comparatively light "The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield" which was brilliant. Now that I have read "Traitor to His Class", I see what all the accolades are about. This is a multi-dimensional look at an American icon (whether one likes FDR or not, it must be acknowledged that he has achieved that status) which exposes his foibles as well as his undeniable strengths. I had read several accounts of FDR's life, most recently Jean Smith's FDR and Burton Folsom's FDR Goes to War (both of which I recommend), and they usually focus on either his political decisions or his personal life. Some of them focus on just one aspect of his political achievements or his relationships with family and friends. Brands has given us a thorough and documented study of both. No political decision made by FDR is left unexplained; many of FDR's decisions are analyzed based on FDR's personal motives as well as public. Brands shows how politically shrewd FDR was--and had to be--to push his agendas through. Brands' "The Murder of Jim Fisk..." is, as I mentioned, a lighter book that is, for the most part, a quick read. But then again, given the engagement and intrigues that surround a homicide and a courtroom drama, the book was inevitably fast-paced. Brands did not have that advantage here, when you consider he had to discuss a complicated man and his complicated, radical administration during two of the most traumatic episodes in the first half of the 20th Century: the Great Depression and World War II. And somehow, Brands' 800+ pages move swiftly. The cast of colorful characters who enter and leave the book (Al Smith, Huey Long, Harold Ickes, Joseph Stalin, the Roosevelts themselves) spice up each chapter. And then there's always Eleanor--enough said. For all these reasons, this is a biography for which Professor Brands is to be praised. I recommend it highly.

H W Brands is my favorite author of American history and biographies. But almost every book I order says “last one left in stock,” which seems like high pressure to order. Is that really true? Anyway, Brands starts out with the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event that happened one month before I was born. My father worked for the US Navy in the Long Beach shipyards; he was “frozen” in his job for the duration. My mother told about blackouts all along the coast.

This is an outstanding biography of FDR, whose presidency is an enigma for me. I read another FDR book for two reasons. First, this one is written by one of America’s greatest historians, and also because I am convinced that estranged Eleanor had a far greater role in the radical FDR presidency than any historians have understood. FDR was trapped between two dominant but competing woman in his life and somehow, strangely, that made him such an outstanding president! (If only he had stepped aside after his 3rd term. You cannot be a truly great president if you end it so selfishly.)