This is a really good potted history of a big man, a story "written small" about a person who "wrote large" on the world as we now know it. As with other books by Nathan Miller that I have read, he has crammed an awful lot into a small space and he has done it in a manner which is informative, as complete as possible and very readable. I believe that Mr. Miller chose not to elucidate on a lot of FDR's very personal characteristics for fear that they might get in the way of this story of what and how such a man was so instrumental in making USA what it is now. Like Churchill, Roosevelt was a man for the times and we should probably be thankful for that. It is scary to think of what Al Smith or Alf Landon would have made of the situation that needed to be dealt with and those that arose. At the end of the book I wasn't sure that I actually liked FDR, although I felt I should have, but I liked what he did. I think that Mr. Miller's treatment of Theodore Roosevelt in another book was better than his treatment of Franklin in this one but it is still a good biography and I recommend it to anyone reading bios of the Presidents. ( )