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Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (平装)
by Jon Meacham
| Category:
World War II, Leadership |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
MSL price:
¥ 168.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A great political and personal friendship that made today's world possible. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 11 items |
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The New Yorker (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
After their first meeting, in 1918, Roosevelt said that Churchill was "a stinker" Churchill didn't even remember Roosevelt. But by their next exchange, in 1939, Churchill was convinced that Britain's future depended on getting Roosevelt to like him. Meacham's engaging account argues that personal bonds between leaders are crucial to international politics. He draws heavily on diaries and letters to describe a complicated courtship and, at times, seems amazed at what Winston is willing to put up with from Franklin. Churchill paints a landscape for the President, sings for him, and agonizes when his notes go unanswered; Roosevelt teases him in front of Stalin, criticizes him to reporters, and eventually breaks his heart with a diverging vision of the postwar world. But Churchill never gives up, and he later recalled, "No lover ever studied the whims of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt." |
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Tom Brokaw (Author of The Greatest Generation) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
This is at once an important, insightful, and highly entertaining portrait of two men at the peak of their powers who, through their genius, common will, and uncommon friendship, saved the world. Jon Meacham’s Franklin and Winston takes its place in the front ranks of all that has been written about these two great men. |
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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (Author of The Age of Roosevelt) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Franklin and Winston is a sensitive, perceptive, and absorbing portrait of the friendship that saved the democratic world in the greatest war in history. |
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Michael Beschloss (Athor of The Conquerors) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Jon Meacham has done groundbreaking work by focusing on the World War II alliance between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill as a friendship. Using important new sources, he has brought us a shrewd, original, sensitive, and fascinating look at the many-layered relationship between these two towering human beings, as well as their friends, families, aides, and allies. The book reveals the emotional undercurrents that linked FDR and Churchill - and sometimes estranged them - and teases out which of the ties between them were heartfelt and which were based on raw mutual political need. Meacham triumphantly shows how lucky we are that Roosevelt and Churchill were in power together during some of the most threatening moments of the twentieth century.
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Richard Holbrooke (Author of To End a War) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
The relationship between FDR and Churchill was the most important political friendship of the twentieth century, not only determining the outcome of World War II but also setting a pattern that has endured ever since. Jon Meacham brings it to vivid life, shedding new insights into its strange and poignant complexity, and why its legacy has helped shape the modern world. |
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Warren F. Kimball (Author of Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Jon Meacham enlivens the two men, their families, and their personal relations and relationships, providing a human context for the world-shaping leaders of the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War.
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Ed Uyeshima (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Now whenever I see Bush and Blair at their parallel podiums in their mutual support for the war in Iraq, I wonder if people in the forties perceived Roosevelt and Churchill just as cynically. Author Jon Meacham, the managing editor for Newsweek, has done some extensive research to build a supremely engaging story of the burgeoning friendship between Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II. They actually had a lot in common - turbulent private lives, long-lasting marriages, problem children, and medical problems (Roosevelt paralyzed by polio, Churchill's purported alcoholism). They sought each other's company for reasons that went well beyond the struggles of the war, yet their relationship imbued their respective leadership roles with a human quality that seems sadly missing today.
Before the advent of e-mail, these two leaders exchanged an astounding number of messages, nearly two thousand. The author seems to have gotten access to a great many of them, including the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, as he pieces together a friendship alternately devoted and tenuous. And the two men often met secretly in many different locales, and Meacham was able to interview the few survivors who were in Roosevelt and Churchill's joint company. The combination of accounts sheds fresh light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of action for the Allies toward victory in WWII. The introduction of Joseph Stalin caused an odd triangle that brought out Churchill's insecurity and his exclusion from strategic discussions. Meacham shows how the frailty of the human ego is no different when it comes to world leaders and the fate of their countries. As we know, Stalin's intrusion ultimately led to the U.S. and Russia being the emerging superpowers, not England. When Roosevelt died in the spring of 1945, even as he was making plans to travel to England, Churchill was crushed; he could not bring himself to come to the funeral to say goodbye. Such was the depth of their male bonding, and Meacham's book demonstrates that leaders are not made of stone, that they still need a connection with someone who can empathize with their challenges as they discriminately wield their power. In certain ways, the author has written the historical equivalent of a buddy picture. A surprisingly entertaining read not just for WWII fanatics.
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K. Dunlap (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
I found this book to be excellent. As an obsessive researcher, I found it rather slow going as I would ponder the significance of so many of the discussions between and about Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. This book is not about WWII except as it played into the Roosevelt-Churchill relationship. It mentions events (the Battle of the Bulge for instance), but assumes the reader knows what happened at the Ardennes. Since I am not expert in the events of WWII I frequently found myself using other sources to get added information about specific WWII events. As a result, I spent weeks reading this book. For those who either have all the historical background or are willing to read the book for its own contents (and not ponder the significance of everything) it would be a very enjoyable read about the personalities of the central characters and how the deep relationship formed in spite of the huge differences.
I believe that Churchill came across as the more heroic man and the more loyal friend. Roosevelt always seemed to be concentrating on how each event reflected on him as a man and a leader and was more willing to compromise his agreements with Churchill when it suited his purpose. Churchill had his own eccentricities, but was very loyal to his friend even as he was absolutely determined not to surrender to Hitler.
The heroism of the Brits is made quite clear. I think most Americans know of the courage displayed by citizens of Great Britain, but this book reminds the reader how and why there is a bond between America and Britain that can never be compared with any other American alliance.
Since Jon Meacham tilts considerably to the left (I assume this is the reason) he pretty much gives Roosevelt a pass on the many concessions he made for the benefit of the USSR as personified by "Uncle Joe". Some of these led to many unnecessary deaths (in the Warsaw uprising, for example) and the huge Communist sphere (including East Germany) after the war.
Meacham has chosen well in the personal events he chose to include, including Roosevelt's long relationship with Lucy Mercer Rutherford, which almost certainly began as an ordinary affair and may or may not have had some sexual aspects in later years.
Meacham writes well and the book is extremely well sourced. |
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I. Tysoe (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
This is the story of a human and a political friendship. A seemingly unlikely friendship between a Tory Prime Minister and a Progressive President. A friendship between an extroverted, warm human being and an introverted, many layered and often secretive man. A friendship between two men who lived in a time not so very different from our own, when certainties were few, enemies seemed to spring up like mushrooms, and the whole world in danger.
Their friendship did much to save that world. It was a friendship that made D-Day possible; and it was in part thanks to that friendship that Winston and Franklin made a joint decision to avenge, not save the victims of the Holocaust. Their decisions saved and cost millions of lives. They were two friends, doing their best in a world plunged into darkness. And they brought it out again-together.
Winston Churchill led Britain when that island stood alone against Hitler for one year; Franklin Roosevelt patiently prodded an isolationist nation into accepting the responsibility that comes with power. And in the end, they made a "world that is for many a better one than existed before" (283).
Thanks to their efforts, when "an American President and a British prime minister [today] walk through the woods of Camp David, or confer on a transatlantic telephone, they are working in the style and in the shadow of Roosevelt and Churchill. [They are reaffirming] the Anglo-American alliance [that] has been the bedrock of global order for decades" (366).
A bedrock Winston and Franklin created in those fraught years of a world war.
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David Trail (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Although the two men who would most impact the eventual course of the Second World War greatly disliked each other at first (they met decades before either one was a national leader), Jon Meacham is able to interestingly draw a reader into the warming of their friendships and then the critical heat of battle they enjoyed together.
Using a wide variety of sources, Meacham's book charts the course of their upbringing on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and the adventurous travels they embarked upon that led to their early encounters. Both were similar in their interests in government and politics, and were very ambitious. Yet, the two men grew toward each other with the passage of time, and by the Second World War, were able to respect the other's personality and intelligence greatly. Whether it was in their late-night drinking sessions as they dreamed up ideas and hatched plots, or aboard their ships off Newfoundland, or to their secret conferences in Casablanca or Teheran or elsewhere, it was the closeness of these two men that formed the glue that bound the Anglo-American alliance against the Axis.
This book warmly portrays both men through the author's access to letters, diaries, and people who knew them, and admirably makes both men stand out as if alive. When confronted with the most challenging decisions and situations a leader could ever face, these were two of the greatest the world has ever known, and Meacham has done a brilliant job desribing not only the situations and potential repercussions, but also the two men, their countries and their friendship we still hold dear to this day.
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 11 items |
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