'[A] superb study of the way FDR successfully created a presidency that could renew America' -
Times Literary Supplement 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.
