From "America''s preeminent presidential historian . . . a thoughtful, highly entertaining portrait of Roosevelt''s thrilling 1936 campaign and victory" (Bob Batchelor, award-winning cultural historian).Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for US HistoryAward-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt''s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America''s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in ''36; powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR''s "Raw Deal"; wildly popular, radical radio commentator Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era''s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.Crafting his account from an impressive and unprecedented collection of primary and secondary sources, Pietrusza has produced an engrossing, original, and authoritative account of an election, a president, and a nation at the crossroads. The nation''s stakes were high . . . and the parallels hauntingly akin to today''s dangerously strife-ridden political and culture wars."It has been many a moon since I had as much fun [as I did] reading Roosevelt Sweeps Nation." —George F. Will, Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist
