William I. Hitchcock is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning teacher who has published numerous books relating to World War II and the Cold War, including The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association. He is also the author of The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s. He received his BA degree from Kenyon College and his PhD from Yale University. He has been a Fulbright scholar, a fellow of the Nobel Institute in Oslo, the holder of the Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, and a Berlin Prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is now the James Madison Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

“In popular memory, the story of World War II is straightforward: when darkness fell, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s America rescued democracy from dictatorship. As William Hitchcock shows in this illuminating and compelling book, however, the victory was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, a close-run thing. By bringing FDR and his trials with public opinion at home back to vivid life, Hitchcock has given us an unflinching, unsentimental portrait of a president and a populace trying to make their way through uncertainty and complexity. This is history as it happened, reminding us anew of how vulnerable democracy can be when the forces of autocracy are on the march.”—Jon Meacham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America

William I. Hitchcock is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning teacher who has published numerous books relating to World War II and the Cold War, including The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association. He is also the author of The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s. He received his BA degree from Kenyon College and his PhD from Yale University. He has been a Fulbright scholar, a fellow of the Nobel Institute in Oslo, the holder of the Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, and a Berlin Prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is now the James Madison Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

“In popular memory, the story of World War II is straightforward: when darkness fell, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s America rescued democracy from dictatorship. As William Hitchcock shows in this illuminating and compelling book, however, the victory was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, a close-run thing. By bringing FDR and his trials with public opinion at home back to vivid life, Hitchcock has given us an unflinching, unsentimental portrait of a president and a populace trying to make their way through uncertainty and complexity. This is history as it happened, reminding us anew of how vulnerable democracy can be when the forces of autocracy are on the march.”—Jon Meacham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America