Different jacket

4163 Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, by James MacGregor Burns (read 21 May 2006) (Pulitzer History prize in 1971)(National Book Award for history and biography in 1971) Reading this volume was an amazing experience for me because it covered the years 1940 to 1945, all of which was a time of acute awareness for me, especially as it pertained to FDR. So the events were very familiar, even though there were things that I did not know (though not much, it seemed). Burns is not overly friendly to FDR, but on balance he is favorable to much of what he did. The final chapter, as in all great biographies, was superb and wrenching. Reading these volumes was a stupendous experience for me, eminently worthwhile, and I should have read them 35 years ago. ( )

Politics