FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, PRESIDENT

A surprisingly full portrait of F.D.R., both as a person and as a politician, is packed into this brief biography. By incorporating many well-known and lesser-known anecdotes and quotes, the author demonstrates Roosevelt's humor, arrogance, strong will, and uncanny political sense. The reader finds out that the teen-aged Franklin learned early to make end runs around his equally strong-willed mother, but was regarded as a ""feather-duster"" (lightweight) by the young ladies. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, however, eager to update a ""bathtub"" Navy, F.D.R. ordered the marines to seize a newly-built ship that a young supervisor named Joe Kennedy refused to release until the Navy paid the bill. The same storytelling technique often captures in a few paragraphs the complex politics of the times. During WW II, for example, Roosevelt made fun of Churchill in order to butter up ""Uncle Joe"" Stalin--though Stalin told his own people that Churchill was a harmless pickpocket out for small coins, while F.D.R. was a pickpocket who ""dips his hands only for bigger coins."" Much of the coverage is brief, especially of WW II, but there's enough included here to give the reader a sense of the man and his times. A short list of sources is listed under the acknowledgements. Illustrated with photographs.