I recently had the privilege to spend an evening on the deck at a East Texas hunting lodge at sunset at a law society meeting listening to Professor H.W. Brands speak extemporaneously on Sam Houston. Professor Brands, a nationally recognized presidential historian, will be speaking next month at the State Bar of Texas annual meeting. Since he's being brought in by the Litigation Section - which usually means we get to score a dinner with him the night before he speaks - I thought I better get to work reading some of his recent works.
For starters, I picked his readable (as opposed to magisterial, which sort of means not readable) biography of FDR, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I had seen the book previously but had deliberately avoided it since it based on the title it appeared to me to be a diatribe against the Roosevelt presidency, and since I enjoy reading about FDR, I didn't think I'd like it. After all, No Ordinary Time by Goodwin is one of my favorite pieces of history, and I've recently enjoyed Roosevelt's Secret War by Persico and just realized I have but have not yet read Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship. Need to get on that. Jamie and I went through FDR's home in Hyde Park ten years ago this summer and - let's face it - I have a tulip poplar from Hyde Park growing outside my study that we've had for eleven years and through two homes. So it's not like I'm going to be interested in a FDR biography by an author with an axe to grind.
I bought the book on Amazon in Kindle format, and read it between my iPad, Android phone, and most recently my Kindle 3 on my last State Bar trip, and really enjoyed it. Although I could quibble with the misidentification of some battleships that FDR advocated building as Undersecretary of the Navy, and I'd have liked a few more dates to nail things down, the book did a good job of providing a readable narrative about FDR's life. It wasn't as detailed as others - which are both bigger and more focused, but it also did a better job presenting certain things. For example, in a way no other author has done, Brands repeatedly brings FDR's early career decisions back to comparing his career to Uncle Ted's. FDR consciously copied TR's career path, Brands points out, but at certain points had to decide to do something different to avoid a mistake he believed TR had made.
Brands also points up an episode in FDR's Navy Department career that I was completely ignorant of - late in the war, franctic that he'd miss the conflict, FDR got himself on a boat to Europe and hobnobbed with everyone from King George V and Clemenceau to trench soldiers. It was only a brief visit - a matter of weeks I am guessing, but it was invaluable experience for a future wartime president. It also - incidentally - led directly to Eleanor finding out about his dalliance with Lucy Mercer, because Roosevelt was sick when he came back, and as a result Eleanor unpacked his luggage and found their correspondence.
This was probably the most thorough treatment of the New Deal I have read, and showcased the breathtaking scope of what FDR was trying to, pointing out clearly how much power he was asking for, and how untested and frequently contradictory the programs were. It also points up the political genius he exercised in not getting too far ahead of the people in bringing the U.S. into the war, which I already knew, and how much trouble he had with Britain as an ally, since the "Four Freedoms" and much else of the war aims we take for granted were directly contradicted by the way the British Empire was maintained. The U.S. could state it was fighting for democracy without a second thought. But the needs of maintaining the British Empire meant that Britain was fighting to a large extent to prevent democracy and free trade for its own subjects - and Churchill was constantly trying to enlist U.S. support in maintaining his colonial empire (most notably India). FDR had constantly to prevent from being used to assist Britain in maintaining an empire that was inconsistent with the war aims FDR was stating the U.S. was fighting for. That was something new to me - I didn't realize that Hitler and Tojo had the facts on their side when they pointed out that Britain was talking out of both sides of its mouth when it claimed to be fighting for democratical principles. Essentially, FDR had to finesse that the freedoms being discussed did not extend to the subjects of the British Empire (outside Britain proper). This also brought a delightful new dimension to the British relationship with DeGaulle and France. Britain was advocating a larger role for France than made sense to anyone else, but it was in part because France could be expected to support British colonial ambitions because France had one that needed protection as well (most significantly a little place called Vietnam). So this was an interesting new twist to the FDR/Churchill relationship that I had not understood before.
It is possible I was more sensitive to this as a result of listening to the recent lectures on Victorian Britain - I knew that the British Empire was a protected economic zone, so I may have realized that the British Empire was more than just a point of pride with Britain - it was an economic necessity. I also really appreciated Brands' noting that the Indian Army was crucially important as well - its size was what allowed Britain to "fight above its weight" in international affairs. Brands stated that the Indian infantry was actually more important than the British Navy to preserving Brtiain's role as a world power. Now that's saying something.
So in the end I learned something and I enjoyed the read. That's all I ask. Well, more pictures would have been nice, but I did appreciate that Brands included the April 11, 1945 of FDR posing for the artist - it showed just how thin and aged FDR looked at the time of his death.
Great book - I look forward to getting the author to sign my ... Kindle?