Who Would Like This Book:
If you love getting behind the scenes of big historical events, this book offers a fascinating peek into the friendship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Meacham does a fantastic job highlighting not just the monumental decisions, but also the personalities, quirks, and real camaraderie between two of the 20th century's most important leaders. History buffs, fans of character-driven nonfiction, and anyone intrigued by World War II and extraordinary partnerships will find this a compelling and very readable journey. Whether you prefer print or audiobook, it's accessible and engrossing.
Who May Not Like This Book:
Readers looking for a straightforward, detailed military history of WWII might be a bit disappointed - this isn’t a blow-by-blow account of battles and strategy. Instead, it’s focused on relationships, correspondence, and the personal side of historical events. Some may find the sympathetic portrayals skip over flaws or controversial decisions. Others might feel bogged down by the level of detail on family and background if they're after a brisker overview.
About:
Author Jon Meacham's book detailed an area heretofore uncovered, showing the deep friendship with all its flaws between these two giants. This filled in so many blanks and let us see and understand the relationship between these men, and how they played their games while defeating Hitler and his evils. Churchill was correct about Russia, something Roosevelt didn't acknowledge or see. Was this possibly due to Roosevelt's declining health or ego. Meacham does a fine job dissecting the personal and political friendship of perhaps the two most important figures in the 20th century. While neither man was perfect, each must be given his due for what he accomplished for his country as well as for the world in a time of mass upheaval and danger. Meacham deftly handles the question of Churchill's impatience with America's reluctance to jump into the fray by making it clear that it was Churchill's personal respect and relationship with FDR that persevered beyond his personal impatience with America's refusal to act between 1939 through to the end of '41. To be sure, Churchill comes through as the better man when Meacham delves into the personal aspects of both men's characters. FDR did not appear nearly as warm personally as Churchill did. Having prior read biographies and histories of both men, this fact did not surprise me. Despite this, the reader gets the sense that both men understood the importance of what they were setting out to achieve once they did come together. Whether you agree with their policies, credit is due and must be given to what was accomplished during their years in office. As with any politician, it would be easy to criticize either man for his faults and political shortcomings. And, with any politician of the past, it is unfairly easy for us to judge and say that more could have been accomplished than what was. Two failings that jump off the present day page when reading about their decisions were the reluctance to do more for the Jewish population during the horror known as the Holocaust as well as their willingness to give Stalin and the Soviet more weight in the world than was wise particularly FDR. But, to judge too harshly would perhaps be unjust. We should remember that these men were working without the benefit of hindsight and were products of their time and generation. These failings should be noted to show that both men were far from perfect in their judgments and perceptions, but it would be more correct to value their vast commitment to the common good of mankind in the 20th century. Without their commitment and actions, one shudders to think where the world might be had there not been a Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill.
Genres:
Topics:
Notes:
From The Publisher:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history's towering leaders
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of "the Greatest Generation." In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one-a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children.
Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations-yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR's affections-which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides-and Winston Churchill.
Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history.
Meacham's new sources-including unpublished letters of FDR' s great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with the few surviving people who were in FDR and Churchill's joint company-shed fresh light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle.
Hitler brought them together; later in the war, they drifted apart, but even in the autumn of their alliance, the pull of affection was always there. Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.
Ratings (1)
It Was OK (1) |
Reader Stats (5):
Read It (1) | |
Want To Read (4) |
What can you read after
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship?
About the Author:
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, and The Soul of…
When you click the Amazon link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commision, at no cost to you.
