FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT Champion of Freedom CONRAD BLACK

"[A] deft writer who applies to one of the most influential men of the 20th century what he has learned from a career of sizing up people and their ambitions. The result is a sweeping, occasionally sprawling biography. At 1,280 pages, it's a companion for the long haul--and an engrossing one, thanks to the storytelling and pungency of its judgments."
Wall Street Journal review from Pulitzer Prize winning author Daniel Yergin, December 3, 2003

"Conrad Black's life of Franklin Roosevelt is a great achievement, and all the more welcome for being more than a little surprising. The book is well-researched, readable and judicious. It deserves to become the standard one-volume life of FDR."
The Economist, November 29, 2003

"However unexpected, this enormous book is also one of the best one-volume biographies of Roosevelt yet. . . . it tells the remarkable story of Roosevelt's life with an engaging eloquence and with largely personal and mostly interesting opinions about the people and events he is describing. . . . Lord Black . . . has created a powerful and often moving picture of the life as a whole. . . . it is a worthy and important addition to the vast literature on the most important modern American leader."
Historian Alan Brinkley, The New York Times, November 26, 2003

"Black has an uncanny grasp of the intricacies of American politics . . . . His account of how Roosevelt swung the Democratic Convention of 1932, to win the nomination for the presidency, is one of the funniest and cleverest essays in the analysis of American politics ever written, worthy to rank beside the work of Theodore H. White or A.J. Liebling."
Historian John Keegan, London Daily Telegraph, November 19, 2003

"[An] unrivaled biography. . . .A major social history of the time. . .[C]elebrates its long-elusive protagonist. . . .while capturing Roosevelt in all his rich, baffling, and fascinating variety. [Black's] mastery of surrounding moment and personalities, of a vanished America, is often rendered in such a graceful sweep . . . that we hardly notice how thoroughly the author commands the material."
Cover review in the 11/15 Books insert of the Toronto Globe & Mail

"monumental and admirable biography . . . this book is not simply splendid and thorough, marvelously readable and valuable, it is also a sustained and challenging argument. A powerful and impassioned case is being made, in a strong and sinewy language, by a biographer who reveres his subject, relishes the thrust of debate and repeatedly engages his putative critics on the page. . . . Black has a fine eye for the telling anecdote, however it reflects on his subject. . . . Black's book is not just the best Roosevelt biography so far, but also by far the most enjoyable."
The National Interest, Winter Issue

"At 1,134 pages (plus notes), Black's portrait is hard to hold-and harder to put down: an intimate biography of a remarkable yet fallible man."
U.S. News & World Report, November 17, 2003

"Better than any other Roosevelt biographer, Mr. Black confronts the Yalta myth head on…So the question is, where does this life rank in the canon of Roosevelt biography? For grace of style and force of perception, I put it at the top."
The New York Sun, November 12, 2003

"Black's chronicle of a man of strength and vision is a worthy tribute of his legacy."
Booklist, November 11, 2003

"Conrad Black has written an extraordinary life of FDR that is not only the best one-volume (1,296 pages) biography of its subject, but also a fascinating history of the Roosevelt era. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, which goes on sale Tuesday, is a worthy companion to McCullough's Truman and Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson."
The Chicago Sun-Times, November 9, 2003

"Massive and moving, barbed yet balanced, it is scrupulously objective and coldly unsparing of agenda-ridden earlier biographers and historians. It leaps to the head of the class of Rooseveltian lives and will be difficult to supersede...not only the best one-volume life of the 32nd President but the best at any length, bound to be widely read and discussed."
Publishers Weekly, week of September 26, 2003

"Conrad Black makes a thorough and compelling case for his view that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the most important person of the 20th Century. Whether overcoming painful physical barriers or leading the country through the Great Depression and World War II, FDR demonstrated the heroic qualities that define the "Greatest Generation"--faith, optimism, strength and vision. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom provides a sweeping insight into a life that Churchill called "one of the commanding events in human history."
Former President Bill Clinton

"Everybody knows Conrad Black, the famous, flamboyant, contrarian media mogul. But what happens when a contrarian turns double-contrarian? If he's good, something on the order of this surprising, Dumas Malone-scale study of Franklin D. Roosevelt."
Tom Wolfe

"No biography of Roosevelt is more thoughtful and readable. None is as comprehensive."
Henry A. Kissinger

"Conrad Black skillfully assembles powerful arguments to support strong and sometimes surprising judgments. This spirited defense of Roosevelt as a savior of America's enterprise system, and a geopolitical realist, is a delight to read."
George F. Will

"Conrad Black's Franklin Delano Roosevelt is extraordinary. It is something different from the dim and flickering lamp of academic retrospect. A new--and generous--light is poured on its subject: an illumination directed by a conviction of Roosevelt's place in the history of an entire century."
John Lukacs

PAPERBACK
ISBN 978-1-58648-282-4
Pub date: 03/05/05
Price: $22.00/31.00 Canada
6 1/8 X 9 1/4
1296 pages
32pp b/w photos
Carton Quantity: 8
Biography, History
Selling Territory: WxUK, CW
Pub history: