A welcome, insightful addition to the literature surrounding FDR.
A capable account of a specific period in the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945).
Political historian Darman opens his study of FDR in 1920, when he was plotting a bid to become the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, knowing that he lacked the experience and support to become the top dog but also that “the bottom of the ticket was another matter altogether.” Alas, even though FDR labored valiantly “to convince the country that, despite their eight years in power, the Democrats were the party of the future, not the past,” the Republicans won by a landslide. Roosevelt regarded the race and, it seems, himself as miserable failures, but his attention would soon be fixed on another problem, for within a year he would be diagnosed with polio. By Darman’s account, it was remaking himself over the seven years following contracting the virus that shaped Roosevelt into the politician we think of today. For good or bad, Roosevelt was secretive about the illness, and even as president, he quietly made it known that news photographs of himself with wheelchair or walker were not wanted. When he returned to political life, Roosevelt had to be carried to the stage, but even there he hid himself behind the curtain and made his way to the lectern on his own. This was both deceptive and close to heroic, and “Franklin never let on how grueling it all was simply to make it through the day.” The torments continued throughout his four terms as president, during which he was often a visitor to the curative waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, where he died. Usefully, Darman writes that even though FDR was “a privileged child of the American aristocracy…years of illness and convalescence had taught him what it felt like to be forgotten, humiliated, and overlooked as unimportant.”
A welcome, insightful addition to the literature surrounding FDR.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6707-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fresh perspective on a familiar subject.
The American Revolution reframed as “a world war in all but name.”
The struggle of 13 North American colonies for independence from Great Britain quickly turned into a global conflict, writes Bell, a professor of history at the University of Maryland. Patriot leaders cultivated the support of England’s major rivals, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, which began by covertly supplying the rebels with weapons and by 1779 were engaging in open warfare. French and Spanish fleets turned the Caribbean into a major battlefront, forcing England to send troops from North America to protect its precious “sugar islands,” while American privateers inflicted huge losses on British merchant ships and boosted the rebel colonies’ economy. A separate Spanish-British war in Florida and South America also weakened England’s attempt to suppress the independence, as did French efforts to incite revolts in India against British rule. The repercussions after Americans won their independence also extended beyond the Eastern seaboard. Spain and Britain both tightened their controls over remaining colonies. Native American tribes lost what little protection England had provided against white settlers’ incursions on their lands, which grew increasingly aggressive after independence. Enslaved African Americans who fought for Britain on the basis of promises of freedom were resettled first in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone; their odyssey is the subject of a particularly fascinating chapter. Bell’s international emphasis occasionally leads him to overreach, as when he claims that the 1780 anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London were “also an expression of popular opposition to the American war,” but his basic argument is sound (and there was considerable antiwar sentiment in England). Based on solid and deep research, his book is written in clear, accessible prose—with entertaining minutiae such as the fact that the minutemen at Lexington and Concord fired guns made in Spain—that will appeal to general readers with an interest in history.
A fresh perspective on a familiar subject.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593719510
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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