H.W. Brands: Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life & Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Over the idyllic days and nights they shared as children, the prep schools and pursuits of leisure, he gave no sign that he would, one day, betray them. Like them, he was born to a vast, inexhaustible fortune and a family name that traced back to the Mayflower. He was one of them: privileged beyond ordinary men, the aristocracy of New York. But after he became President, they realized that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had become a traitor in their midst.

Traitor to His Class examines three eras of Roosevelt's life: the privileged child of the upper crust, the economic reformer of the New Deal, and the resolute leader of World War II. In the early days, everything seemed to go right for the charismatic Roosevelt, who climbed the political ladder as if following a secret map to the Presidency. At 25, he dropped out of law school and sought election to the New York State Assembly; from there, he served for seven years as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, including World War I, and was nominated for Vice President before he turned 40.

But H. W. Brands finds a turning point in the illness that paralyzed the 39 year-old Roosevelt from the waist down, and brought a temporary halt to his political career. During rehabilitation in rural Georgia, he met poverty-stricken farmers whose experiences were a world away from the life of privilege he'd known. After returning to New York, Roosevelt continued the course he had charted, but he was a changed man. The problems of those Georgia farmers would form the core of the New Deal; the grueling rehabilitation would steel him for the challenges he faced as President. In Brands' recounting, Roosevelt's agenda faces crucial setbacks from Congress, the courts, and his own overambition, but he revels in being the enemy of the privileged few to which he belonged.

H. W. Brands is a professor of history and government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of twenty-two books, including Andrew Jackson, Lone Star Nation, and The Age of Gold, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for biography for The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin.