Roosevelt Sweeps Nation

FDR's 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal

David Pietrusza

• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781635767773
• eBook ISBN:
  9781635767780
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

From "America's preeminent presidential historian . . . a thoughtful, highly entertaining portrait of Roosevelt's thrilling 1936 campaign and victory" (Bob Batchelor, award-winning cultural historian).
Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for US History
Award-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt's unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America's most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.
With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in '36; powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR's "Raw Deal"; wildly popular, radical radio commentator Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era's racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.
Crafting his account from an impressive and unprecedented collection of primary and secondary sources, Pietrusza has produced an engrossing, original, and authoritative account of an election, a president, and a nation at the crossroads. The nation's stakes were high . . . and the parallels hauntingly akin to today's dangerously strife-ridden political and culture wars.
"It has been many a moon since I had as much fun [as I did] reading Roosevelt Sweeps Nation." —George F. Will, Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• More Praise for Roosevelt Sweeps Nation
• Roosevelt Sweeps Nation
• Also by David Pietrusza
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Cast of Characters
• 1 “Franklin is on his own now”
• 2 “Try something”
• 3 “One bullet”
• 4 “Five negroes on my place . . .”
• 5 “A great pity”
• 6 “Common, ignorant, and half-tight”
• 7 “Methodist picnic people”
• 8 “A voice made for promises”
• Photos
• 9 “Shirt Mania”
• 10 “Heil Hearst”
• 11 “The Old Deal”
• 12 “Anno Domini Father Divine”
• 13 “Dumb-bells, freaks, rubes and hicks”
• 14 “It’s myself”
• 15 “20,000 morons”
• 16 “Innocuous as a watermelon . . . boiled in a bathtub”
• Photos
• 17 “Keep on running”
• 18 “The very essence of un-Americanism”
• 19 “I welcome their hatred”
• 20 “Send for a priest”
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Sources
• About the Author