His Final Battle The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt

by Lelyveld, Joseph

• ISBN13: 9780345806598
• ISBN10: 034580659X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-10-31
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year: Foreign Affairs, Bloomberg

In March 1944, as World War II raged and America’s next presidential election loomed, Franklin D. Roosevelt was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Driven by a belief that he had a duty to see the war through to the end, Roosevelt concealed his failing health and sought a fourth term—a term that he knew he might not live to complete. With unparalleled insight and deep compassion, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Joseph Lelyveld delves into Roosevelt’s thoughts, preoccupations, and motives during his last sixteen months, which saw the highly secretive Manhattan Project, the roar of D-Day, the landmark Yalta Conference and FDR’s hopes for a new world order—all as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax. His Final Battle delivers an extraordinary portrait of this famously inscrutable man, who was full of contradictions but a consummate leader to the very last.

Author Biography

Joseph Lelyveld spent nearly four decades as a reporter and editor at The New York Times, and served as executive editor from 1994 to 2001. This is his third book since then, following Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India and Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop. An earlier book on apartheid, Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, won the Pulitzer Prize.