ROOSEVELT: The Soldier of Freedom

by James MacGregor Burns ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 1970

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 clay man of Realpolitik and practicality. A broad-based political 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, caught uncertainly ""between the evangelical moods of idealism, sentimentalism, and utopianism of one era and older traditions of national self-regard, protectiveness, and prudence of another."" 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 and the two souls in Roosevelt's breast. ""He was indeed, in all the symbolic and ironic senses of the term, a soldier of freedom."" A rich historical portrait, supplemented with 40 cartoons and 16 pages of illustrations. (Burns is a government professor at Williams College.)

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION