FDR A Centenary Remembrance

The year 1982 brings both the hundredth birthday of Franklin Delaon Roosevelt and the fiftieth anniversary of his first triumphant campaign for the Presidency. Joseph Alsop, one of the most incisive, eloquest, and celebrated journalists and columnists of our time, is uniquely qualified to write this remembrance. He is related to the Roosevelts, and when the New York Herald Tribune sent hime to Washington in the 1930s, he found himself not only covering the New Deal revolution, but also being frequently invited to the White House as "family." In mettlesome and evocative prose, the author gives us the living Roosevelt - mother dominated child and man, unhappy Groton schoolboy and Harvard student, husband of Eleanor, disappointed lover of another woman, battler against crippling disease, consummate politician, pragmatist and seeker of ends over ideals, prophet of the New Deal, and wartime leader nonpareil. Whether we are old enough to remember FDR or can only read of him now, Joseph Alsop has the magic to make us return to that dramatic Inaugural Day in 1933 to hear him say, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."