With a built in skepticism and a respect for evidence, Joseph Lelyveld leads us deeper into the thickly forested interior at the end of the life of Franklin Roosevelt. This is for anyone who wants to understand one of the most consequential, and most mysterious presidents.

With a built in skepticism and a respect for evidence, Joseph Lelyveld leads us deeper into the thickly forested interior at the end of the life of Franklin Roosevelt. This is for anyone who wants to understand one of the most consequential, and most mysterious presidents.

"By far the most enigmatic leading figure" of World War II. That's how the British military historian John Keegan described Franklin D. Roosevelt, who frequently left his contemporaries guessing, never more so than at the end of his life. Here, author and journalist Joseph Lelyveld untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax. The story is told with a close focus on Roosevelt himself and his hopes for a stable international order after the war, and how these led him into a prolonged courtship of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, involving secret, arduous journeys to Tehran and the Crimea. In between, as the war entered its final phase, came the thunderbolt of a dire medical diagnosis, raising urgent questions about the ability of the longest-serving president to stand for a fourth term at a time when he had little choi

"Untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax"--Dust jacket flap.