FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America

Description

One of the greatest American presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt built a coalition of labour, ethnic, urban, low-income and African American voters that underwrote the Democratic Party's national ascendancy from the 1930s to the 1980s. Over his four terms, he promoted the New Deal - the greatest reform programme in US history - to meet the challenges of the Great Depression, led the United States to the brink of victory in the Second World War, and established the modern presidency as the driving force of American politics and government. Iwan Morgan takes a fresh look at FDR, showing how his leadership enabled the United States of America to become the most successful country of the twentieth century. This astute and original assessment of a highly consequential presidency explains how Roosevelt enhanced the governing capacity of his office, promoted a constitutional revolution through his dealings with the Supreme Court, and forged a new intimacy between the president and the American people through his genius for political communication. It also demonstrates the significance of his organizational and strategic leadership as commander-in-chief in America's greatest foreign war, his role in holding together the US-British-Soviet Grand Alliance against the Axis powers, and his pioneering development of the national-security presidency that sought to promote a lasting post-war peace for the world. In fluid, immensely readable prose, Morgan focuses on the ways in which FDR transformed the presidency into an institution of domestic and international leadership to establish the modern ideal of the office as an assertive, democratic executive charged with meeting the challenges facing the US at home and abroad.

Iwan Morgan is Professor of US Studies emeritus at the Institute of the Americas, University College London, UK. He is also a distinguished fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, UK. He was the recipient of the British Association of American Studies Honorary Fellowship in 2014, and winner of the Richard Neustadt Book Prize in 2010. He is the author of Reagan: American Icon (2016), named by The Times/Sunday Times as a Politics Book of the Year.

[A] superb study of the way FDR successfully created a presidency that could renew America. -- Tony Badger * Times Literary Supplement * This is not the same old stuff about Franklin Roosevelt. Iwan Morgan has given us a more thoughtful and thorough examination of FDR as politician than many of the political biographies written in the last score of years. Using a topical approach... FDR emerges as a wise man, though occasionally with feet of clay. The persuasive and comprehensive epilogue pulls all the various topics -- economic reform, political economy, race relations, party politics, foreign policy and the 2nd World War, et al. -- neatly together. * Warren F. Kimball, Robert Treat Professor of History (emeritus), Rutgers University. USA * In his fresh and highly original examination of an old, familiar figure, Iwan Morgan reveals why Franklin Roosevelt must be regarded as the inventor of the presidency as we know it today. Other presidents had been strong leaders, but Morgan convincingly argues that it was FDR who institutionalized the chief executive as the federal government's center of power. Morgan's crisply argued book is an expert guide to one of the most transformational figures in American history. * Andrew Preston, author of American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction (2019) * Iwan Morgan's new book is a deeply knowledgeable and important study of FDR's transformational presidency. Today, as the United States strives to recover from the aberrant presidency of Donald Trump and as autocracies arise around the world, Morgan's absorbing examination of FDR's political skills and moral vision of democracy could hardly be more timely and urgent. * Susan Dunn, author of '1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler - the Election Amid the Storm' * Washington inaugurated the presidency and Lincoln sustained it, but as Iwan Morgan convincingly demonstrates in this important full assessment, Franklin Delano Roosevelt forged the office we know today. FDR's was 'an heroic presidency,' Morgan tells us, and this thoughtful and timely book will be the go-to volume for understanding this presidential great for years to come. * Jeffrey A. Engel, Director of the Center for Presidential History, Southern Methodist University, USA * Iwan Morgan has written a stunning account of how Franklin Roosevelt guided his country out of depression and through a world war. Morgan shows that strong, effective, and benevolent leadership is possible in a democracy, despite continued partisanship and demagoguery by detractors. He gives us a pragmatic and courageous Roosevelt who transformed the meaning of leadership in his time, and we must again in our own. * Jeremi Suri Author of 'The Impossible Presidency' (2017) * In FDR, Iwan Morgan has pulled off a rare feat of scholarly virtuosity, somehow covering the sweep of FDR's life and re-invention of the American presidency both concisely and precisely. Organized around the different 'hats' worn by modern presidents - a wardrobe FDR expanded and in some cases created - the book synthesizes a vast array of research into a vivid and hugely-readable narrative. Morgan paints a portrait of the rare leader with an instinct for short-term improvisation in service of a long-term vision. FDR's successors would do well to learn both lessons. * Andrew Rudalevige, Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government, Bowdoin College, USA * After his masterful 2016 biography of the most iconic conservative US president of the twentieth century, Ronald Reagan, it is fitting that Iwan Morgan has now produced this exciting new study of the most iconic liberal president, Franklin Roosevelt. In this analytically vibrant and elegantly written work, Professor Morgan explores how FDR transformed America by transforming the institution of the presidency. This is a superb book by the UK's foremost authority on the modern American presidency. * Mark White, Professor of History, Queen Mary University of London, UK *