American politics and government - Essay Example

Obviously, the remarkable life story of Roosevelt is hard to fit into just one biographical volume due to the breadth of its importance and his impact on United States history. Friedal’s hard task was harder when Roosevelt s complex personality is taken into account, making it even more difficult. However Frank Freidel makes an almost masterful job of such an onerous task in " Franklin D. Roosevelt - A rendezvous with Destiny." The book starts with a brief look at Roosevelt s privileged if somewhat lonely youth in the opening chapters, and obviously ends the book with Roosevelt’s death just after the Yalta conference in April 1945.

He died shortly before the final defeat of Nazi Germany and left Harry Truman with the task of ending the war. The vast majority of this book covers his political career from its modest start during Woodrow Wilson’s administration as a junior naval official, all the way to his death during his record forth term in the presidential office. Freidels account of Roosevelt trying to manipulate global gold prices was an enlightening part of his book. Friedal manages to provide a good in depth behind the scene look of the Roosevelt administration trying to implement the New Deal programs to counter the Great Depression during the early 1930s.

The majority of the New Deal legislation was pushed through a Republican controlled Congress during the first hundred days of Roosevelt’s first term in the White House. Some of the most controversial parts of the New Deal were not passed through the Republican controlled Congress and a conservatively minded Supreme Court. Those parts of the New Deal programs that were enacted helped to restore national confidence, improve infrastructures such as the development of dams and the production of hydroelectric power.

Freidel argues that in terms of foreign affairs that Roosevelt was fairly quick to catch on to the danger that Hitler and his Nazi regime represented to global peace and