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

by Stanley Weintraub

Overview

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."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306821189
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	10/08/2013
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Stanley Weintraub is an award-winning author of notable histories and biographies, including the bestselling books on wartime Christmas seasons Pearl Harbor Christmas and Silent Night. A National Book Award finalist and Guggenheim Fellow, he earned a Bronze Star as a young officer in the Korean War. He lives in Newark, Delaware.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Beginnings of Promise xi

1 The Shadow of "Uncle Ted" 1

2 Under the Mansard Roofs 21

3 The Little White House 45

4 War across the Sea 67

5 Rattling the Sword 91

6 Limits of an Assistant Secretary 121

7 "FDR Wishes to Go Abroad" 147

8 "As the Rules Dictate" 173

9 Aftermath 189

10 Running toward the Future 219

11 Postscript 239

Sources 245

Acknowledgments 255

Index 257

Editorial Reviews

“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).”

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

From the Publisher

2013-08-15
An account of Franklin D. Roosevelt's (1882–1945) first few years in politics. FDR began his career in the shadow of Theodore Roosevelt, America's most famous politician. By TR's death in 1919, FDR was a fairly prominent national figure and the 1920 Democratic candidate for vice president. This is where veteran historian Weintraub (Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941, 2011, etc.) ends this perceptive demi-biography of FDR's political maturation under the eyes of two other great presidents. Barely related to Theodore (Eleanor was his niece), Franklin cashed in on his famous name but also worked hard in 1910 to win an upset victory and enter New York State's legislature nearly 30 years after his namesake. He became popular among New York Democrats, and his defiance of Tammany Hall to support Woodrow Wilson in 1912 earned him appointment as assistant secretary of the Navy. Like TR, appointed to the same office in 1897, FDR took advantage of an easygoing boss to run the department with a pugnacious advocacy of naval expansion that made him a beloved figure in the service until the end of his life. The book is largely an account of his activities during eight years as an energetic member of the Woodrow Wilson administration, during which he refined the skills and met the men (and a few women) who figured in his own presidency. Weintraub does not ignore an unhappy Eleanor, rarely at his side, harassed with caring for six children and several large households and already suspicious of his wandering eye. Her political career did not blossom until the children were grown and FDR was in a wheelchair. A lively, insightful account of FDR's early years.

Kirkus Reviews