From Publishers Weekly
Flying over the Nile near Cairo in October 1943, President Roosevelt looked down and quipped, "Ah, my friend the Sphinx." Sometimes portrayed that way by cartoonists in his time, he is utterly unsphinxlike in Lord Black's new biography. Massive and moving, barbed yet balanced, it is scrupulously objective and coldly unsparing of agenda-ridden earlier biographers and historians. It leaps to the head of the class of Rooseveltian lives and will be difficult to supersede. To Black, the Canadian-born media mogul (he owns the London Daily Telegraph and the Chicago Sun-Times, among other papers worldwide), the second Roosevelt was, apart from Lincoln perhaps as savior of the Union, the greatest American president, and with no exceptions the greatest of its politicians. No FDR-haters have exposed, credibly, more of Roosevelt's "less admirable tendencies," from "naked opportunism," "deformed idealism" and "pious trumpery" to "insatiable vindictiveness." Yet the four-term president emerges in Black's compelling life as personifying vividly the civilization he, more than any other contemporary, rescued from demoralizing economic depression and devastating world war. His larger-than-life Roosevelt possesses consummate sensitivity and tactical skill, radiating power and panache despite a physical vulnerability from the polio that left him without the use of his legs at 39. "His insight into common men," Black writes, "was the more remarkable because he was certainly not one of them, and never pretended for an instant that he was." By comparison, Black claims, most associates and rivals seemed like kindergarten children, yet some exceptions are fleshed out memorably, notably Roosevelt's selfless political intimates Louis McHenry Howe and Harry Hopkins, and his vigorous presidential competitor in 1940, the surprising Wendell Willkie. (Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor, comes off as both harridan and heroine.) Barring occasional lapses into English locutions like "Boxing Day" and "Remembrance Day"(the days after Christmas and Armistice Day), or "drinking his own bathwater," Conrad's style is lucid and engaging, witty and acerbic, with lines that cry out to be quoted or read aloud, as when he scorns an attack on the devotion of Roosevelt's daughter, Anna, with "Filial concern does not make the President a vegetable or his daughter a Lady Macbeth." A few minor historical errors deserve correction in what will assuredly be further printings, and the later sections appear to be composed in undue haste, but the sweeping and persuasive impact of this possibly off-puttingly big book makes it not only the best one-volume life of the 32nd president but the best at any length, bound to be widely read and discussed. 32 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Black is the CEO of newspaper publishing giant Hollinger International, Inc. He has written a massive, comprehensive, but frequently ponderous biography of the great FDR. Unfortunately, Black spends an inordinate amount of time describing Roosevelt's personal life, often in mind-numbing detail. Does the fact that a young Franklin tried to conceal an accidental gash to his forehead really help to understand the man? Yet this work has great value, particularly when it focuses upon Roosevelt as president and indomitable wartime leader. In Black's view, Roosevelt, like Churchill, understood that the war was more than a mere struggle between nation states. He believed passionately, and correctly, that it was a struggle to preserve the ideals of liberty and democracy that had been nurtured and developed over centuries. It was that belief that sustained Roosevelt, and it was his skill and courage as a leader that allowed him to bring his people to that realization. Despite its flaws, Black's chronicle of a man of strength and vision is a worthy tribute to his legacy. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Historian Alan Brinkley, The New York Times
"One of the best one-volume biographies of Roosevelt yet."


Daniel Yergin, Wall Street Journal
"A sweeping, occasionally sprawling biography...and an engrossing one, thanks to the storytelling and pungency of its judgments."


Publishers Weekly
"Not only the best one-volume life of the 32nd President but the best at any length."


Claremont Review of Books
"Black... [shows] that FDR is at the origin of our most important political controversies."


Booklist, November 1, 2003
"Black's chronicle of a man of strength and vision is a worthy tribute of his legacy."


Historian John Keegan, London Daily Telegraph, November 19, 2003
"Black has an uncanny grasp of the intricacies of American politics."


Cover review in the 11/15 Books insert of the Toronto Globe & Mail
"[An] unrivaled biography. . . Celebrates its long-elusive protagonist. . . .while capturing Roosevelt in all his rich, baffling, and fascinating variety."


The National Interest, Winter Issue
"monumental and admirable...Black's book is not just the best Roosevelt biography...but also by far the most enjoyable. . ."


Historian Alan Brinkley, The New York Times, November 26, 2003
"However unexpected, this enormous book is also one of the best one-volume biographies of Roosevelt yet. . . "


The Economist, November 27, 2003
"The book is well-researched, readable and judicious. It deserves to become the standard one-volume life of FDR."


Book Description
Now in paperback, the epic biography that critics across the board agree "deserves to become the standard one-volume life of FDR" (*The Economist) Franklin Delano Roosevelt stands astride American history like a colossus. Having pulled the nation out of the Great Depression and led it to victory in the Second World War, in his four terms as president Roosevelt transformed an inward-looking country into the greatest superpower the world had ever known. Few biographies have been able to capture the full scope, the charisma, and the complexities of the man in full-until Conrad Black's Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this extraordinary and eminently readable assessment, Black-a staunch conservative-takes to task the Roosevelt naysayers, lays bare the Yalta myth, and makes a surprising and compelling case that that FDR was the most influential and important person of the twentieth century. Hailed by critics from all sides of the political spectrum as "masterful," "epic," and the "best biography of Roosevelt yet," Franklin Delano Roosevelt is bar-none the definitive biography of the 32nd president. It is an essential resource for anyone who wishes to understand not only Roosevelt-but the very history of the twentieth century, both in America and throughout the world.


About the Author
Conrad Black is the former Chairman and chief executive officer of Hollinger International. He has been a member of the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour since 2001. The author of two previous books published in Canada, Lord Black currently divides his time between London, Toronto, and New York.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In this biography Conrad Black makes a case for Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the most important figure of the twentieth century, the nation's most accomplished leader since Abraham Lincoln, and one of America's greatest presidents. FDR transformed an isolated and isolationist country into the most formidable super-power the world has ever known. He was both the savior of American capitalism, in peril from its own excesses and the competing systems of Communism and Fascism, and the foremost reformer in the nation's history. And it was Roosevelt's bravery and remarkable leadership skills that brought America into the world's conflicts at mid-century as, in Winston Churchill's words, "the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old." It is Black's contention that the second half of the twentieth century was so much more successful than the first because Roosevelt permanently engaged America and Europe in the Far East." How could this man, whose political life nearly ended with an illness at age thirty-nine, have accomplished so much as a politician, war leader, strategist, and global visionary? The sheer scope of FDR's life and achievements has deterred many historians and biographers from attempting a comprehensive biography. Additionally, FDR's remarkable personality was terribly difficult to decode - leading famously to comparisons with the similarly unmovable, and unknowable, Sphinx. Conrad Black has risen to the challenge. He tells us how this privileged seemingly facile young man became the vigorous young president and then the redoubtable older president. Roosevelt was underestimated as a young man and, as Black makes clear, continues, incredibly, to be underestimated, particularly by the propagators of the Yalta myth, according to which Roosevelt was swindled by Stalin. This book demonstrates that Roosevelt's dealings with Stalin were far more successful than the myth would have it.

SYNOPSIS

Newspaper tycoon Black praises former President Roosevelt for having the clearest strategic vision of the major world leaders during World War II and for using "political legerdemain" in using war to end the Great Depression and save democratic capitalism. FDR emerges in these pages, primarily devoted to his four terms in the White House, as the consummate skilled politician and among the U.S.'s greatest presidents. He also gives Roosevelt credit for having laid the groundwork for the Cold War and enabling his successors to "liberate Eastern Europe." Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

However unexpected, this enormous book is also one of the best one-volume biographies of Roosevelt yet. It is not particularly original, has no important new revelations or interpretations and is based mostly on secondary sources (and rather old ones at that). But it tells the remarkable story of Roosevelt's life with an engaging eloquence and with largely personal and mostly interesting opinions about the people and events he is describing. Lord Black's enormous admiration for Roosevelt is based on many things. He reveres what he calls Roosevelt's great courage and enormous skill in moving the United States away from neutrality and first toward active support of Britain and China in the early years of World War II and then toward full intervention. He admires Roosevelt's skill in managing the war effort and his deftness in handling the diplomacy that accompanied it. — Alan Brinkley

Washington Post Book World

....Black does have an unfortunate tendency to repeat information already supplied, even if it was given only a few pages before. The book is certainly longer than it needs to be and could have benefited from a dose of judicious editing, particularly in the later chapters, which appear to have been composed in too much haste. By the early part of the concluding chapter, Black gives the impression of having pieced together a string of notes, jumping from one topic to another without benefit of transition. A paragraph about Roosevelt's assertions of friendship with Charles de Gaulle, for example, concludes with a wholly unrelated sentence about the president not being able to hold his hand steady enough to light a cigarette.

....For those with enough time and interest in the subject to warrant going through a study of much more than a thousand pages, Black's biography is worth reading. But most readers, as well as professional historians, will find Justice Jackson's "insider's portrait" of Roosevelt of greater interest. — Robert S. McElvaine

The New York Times Book Review

[Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom] is fun at times in its eclectic range, if you like this sort of doorstop; especially in the touches that reflect the perspective of others in the English-speaking world.

....Encyclopedic in detail, Lord Black's work is also packed with droit du seigneur conceit and abandon. It gives off the familiar air of vanity publishing; the touch of the haughty proprietor who's read a lot. — Michael Janeway

Chicago Sun-Times

...the best one-volume 1,296 pages biography of its subject... also a fascinating history of the Roosevelt era.

Booklist