Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor; A Great President in a Time of Crisis

New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1970. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. vii, [2], 356, [2] pages. DJ has small chips to top and bottom edges. Includes Preface, Afterword, Acknowledgments, Sources, and Notes, and Index. Some pencil underlining and notes to text. This book is the story of a President's fight for preparedness. It is also the story of a man who had promised again and again that American boys would not be sent to foreign wars, but who said as he observed a world in which liberty was fast disappearing: "We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.'' Leonard S. Baker (January 24, 1931 - November 23, 1984) was an American writer. He won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews, a book about Leo Baeck. His other published works include The Johnson Eclipse: A President's Vice Presidency, Back to Back: The Duel Between FDR and the Supreme Court, John Marshall: A Life in Law, Brandeis and Frankfurter: A Dual Biography, Brahmin in Revolt, Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, and The Guaranteed Society. A 1952 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Arts and Sciences, Baker was a reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat from 1955 to 1956 and for Newsday from 1956 to 1965. Derived from a Kirkus review: Perhaps no phase of Franklin D. Roosevelt's career is more controversial than his involvement in the events leading to Pearl Harbor. Baker's FDR is the very model of a modern major President--a right decent individual and near-perfect leader of the people ("always a little ahead of them but never so far ahead that they could not catch up"). So with the controversy effectively dispelled, Baker's book settles down to a month-by-month rendition of doings at the top during the decisive year 1941. Alert to the very real danger of war, resisting both isolationist and interventionist pressure, Roosevelt moved "at all times cautiously and prudently, within the framework of the American system" to ready the country's physical and psychological resources. This work of critical analysis is a commanding scholarly study, well-researched and easily read.