Text size:

FDR books on Obama's nightstand

By Patrick T. Reardon | Tribune reporter

9:40 AM CST, November 18, 2008

Want a glimpse into the future Barack Obama presidency? Take a look back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first 100 days in the White House.

During his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday, the president-elect was asked if he had been reading anything about Roosevelt and the Depression.

Yes, he said. "There's a new book out about FDR's first 100 days. And what you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence and a willingness to try things and experiment in order to get people working again."

Turns out, according to his press office, there are two books on Roosevelt that Obama has been studying: "FDR," by Jean Edward Smith, published by Random House in 2007, and "The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope," by Jonathan Alter, published in 2006 by Simon & Schuster.

(Beyond those, there is one other book that Obama also could consult: "Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America," by Adam Cohen, to be published in January by Penguin Press.)

The opening days of the Roosevelt presidency form a small portion of the 880 pages that Smith, a Marshall University professor and biographer of such prominent Americans as U.S. Grant and George Marshall, devotes to telling FDR's life story.

But Alter's 432-page "Defining Moment" focuses much more closely on that period and argues that Roosevelt's single greatest contribution was reviving the nation—its economy and its political system—in the face of the worst economic threat in its history.

Reading the book by Alter also may give the president-elect insight into another work that the Newsweek journalist is reportedly now starting to research: a history of the first 100 days or so of Obama's own administration.

preardon@tribune.com