My Own Story: From Private and Public Papers

by Franklin Roosevelt

Overview

This volume is in many ways Roosevelt's political autobiography. It permits Roosevelt, in his own words, to tell what he intended to do and what he tried to do as a political leader. It differs sharply from a memoir in that it explains why Roosevelt acted without offering justification or explanation. Donald Day chooses passages that reveal all Roosevelt's dimensions - his humor, personal magnetism, and his insights into the outlook of the American people.Each document reveals a stage in Roosevelt's thinking and at the same time provides the flavor of his personality. The chapters trace his development as a social and political thinker, and also as a unique personality. This unique autobiography begins on "a very hot Saturday morning in 1910 at the policeman's picnic in Fairview when ‘I started to make the acquaintance of that part of Dutchess County that lays outside of the town of Hyde Park. …On that joyous occasion of clams and sauerkraut and real beer I made my first speech, and I have been apologizing for it ever since."The book carries the reader through the highlights of Roosevelt's American domestic policies, foreign dangers, and his personal reflections on the best course of action in each moment of his presidency. The book ends with the last words Roosevelt ever wrote, when he was working on an address to have been delivered on Jefferson Day: "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith." The day was April 12, 1945, the day of his death. The book remains timely and moving.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781412842419
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	06/15/2011
Pages:	470
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the thirty-second President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-twentieth U. S. century, leading the U. S. during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war. The only American president elected to more than two terms, he forged a durable coalition that realigned American politics for decades. First elected in 1932 at the depths of the Great Depression, FDR’s combination of optimism and activism contributed to reviving the national spirit. Working closely with his British and Russian allies against Germany and Japan in World War Two, he died just as victory was in sight.

Donald Day taught at the University of South Dakota, served as editor of the Southwest Review , and later became an editor of Reader’s Digest . Day is the author of The Autobiography of Will Rogers and Big Country, Texas . He prepared similar collections on Woodrow Wilson and Sam Houston.

Table of Contents

Prologue 3

Part I Political Apprenticeship

I Kidnapped into Politics 9

II In the Big Puddle 22

III "I Hate War; I Have Seen War" 41

IV "Not a Landslide but an Earthquake" 54

Part II The Long Wait

V Fate Deals a Hand 71

VI "Good Neighborman" 84

Part III Good Neighborman to New York

VII Back in the Main Channel 111

VIII "The Objectives Were the Same" 118

IX "I Pledge You to a New Deal" 143

Part IV Good Neighborman to the Nation

X "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself" 151

XI "One Hundred Great Days" 156

XII He Kept Dealing New Hands 183

XIII Straights and Flushes and Lots of Deuces 207

XIV The Court Ordered the Old Deck 233

XV Declaration of Economic Independence 264

XVI "I See One Third of a Nation III-housed, III-clad, III-nourished" 275

XVII "Fire Burn, and Cauldron Bubble" 294

XVIII The First Cold War 317

XIX "A Date That Will Live in Infamy" 346

Part V One Gangland or One Neighborhood

XX "Angered Forces of Common Humanity" 367

XXI "Hit Him and Hit Him Again" 380

XXII Through the Mists: One Neighborhood 407

XXIII "To Go Back to My Home on the Hudson" 431

Epilogue 440

Thank You 442

Sources and Acknowledgments 443

Index 447