Young Mr. Roosevelt: FDR's Introduction to War, Politics, and Life

Description

In Young Mr. Roosevelt Stanley Weintraub evokes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's political and wartime beginnings. An unpromising patrician playboy appointed assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913, Roosevelt learned quickly and rose to national visibility in World War I. Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1920, he lost the election but not his ambitions. While his stature was rising, his testy marriage to his cousin Eleanor was fraying amid scandal quietly covered up. Ever indomitable, even polio a year later would not suppress his inevitable ascent.Against the backdrop of a reluctant America's entry into a world war and FDR's hawkish build-up of a modern navy, Washington's gossip-ridden society, and the nation's surging economy, Weintraub summons up the early influences on the young and enterprising nephew of his predecessor, Uncle Ted."

Stanley Weintraub is an historian and an award-winning author of more than fifty highly acclaimed books of history and biography, including Pearl Harbor Christmas, Silent Night, 11 Days in December, Victoria, and Disraeli. He is a National Book Award finalist, former Guggenheim Fellow, and a three-time recipient of the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. He lives in Newark, Delaware.

Kirkus Reviews, 8/15/13 "[A] perceptive demi-biography of FDR's political maturation under the eyes of two other great presidents...A lively, insightful account of FDR's early years." Washington Times, 10/1/13 "There are several reasons for students of the life of the monumental American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to buy this book...It is the first effort devoted solely to the critical eight years of FDR's life from 1912 to 1920, when he evolved from a generally dismissed lightweight dabbler in politics to a formidable national political figure...Author Stanley Weintraub, at 84 and still going strong, is at the top of his writing game that now approaches its 50th anniversary. Mr. Weintraub's output over this past half-century is impressive for both its scholarship and literary accessibility...It is a good beginning for those interested in the evolution of the most influential figure of our immediate history." Bookviews, 9/29/13 "You could fill a library with books about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only man to win four elections to the presidency, a man who led the nation through World War II, and a master politician. It is the younger Roosevelt who is often overlooked and Stanley Weintraub fills that gap...It is a remarkable journey." New York Journal of Books, 10/8/13 "Weintraub also paints a picture of early 20th century Washington, DC, where the residue of Victorian social mores make life resemble the novels of Henry James...A brisk, short, and informative book." InfoDad Blog, 10/10/13 "FDR fanciers who want to know more about the way he rose from inconsequential playboy state senator to major national political figure will find much to enthrall them in Young Mr. Roosevelt, and anyone who happens upon the book by chance will surely be fascinated by the photos showing a young, vigorous and decidedly not wheelchair-bound FDR." San Francisco Book Review/Sacramento Book Review, 10/15/13 "Here we see FDR in his prime, long before polio took its toll. Weintraub captures the period of early twentieth-century mores with all the steamy implications bearing down on the highly visible marriage to Eleanor once the indefensible letters from Lucy Mercer are discovered in FDR's luggage." Hudson Valley News, 10/30/13 "Weintraub tells us how the young Roosevelt learned from his follies and achieved his triumphs." BookNews.com, December 2013 "Tells what it was like to live under the shadow of 'Uncle Ted' (Theodore Roosevelt)."