Roosevelt House welcomes award-winning historian Nigel Hamilton to mark the publication of the stirring climax to his three-part saga of FDR as Commander-in-Chief: War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945. In this final entry in the trilogy, Hamilton focuses on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s role in winning WWII, recounting the final months of Roosevelt’s life, during which he suffered through increasingly poor health while leading the U.S. toward victory. Hamilton aims “not only to chart with fresh clarity how dire was his affliction, but how exactly it affected his decisions and once masterly performance as commander in chief of the Western Allies.” Hamilton shows how Roosevelt “held the feet of the British to the D-Day fire” during the 1943 Tehran meetings, when Churchill began to doubt Allied strategy. Returning from that success, Roosevelt’s health took a turn for the worse; what first seemed to be a bout of flu became more serious cardiac complications. While ill, he won an unprecedented fourth term as president, rekindled a friendship with Lucy Rutherfurd, and met again with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta to plan for a postwar world order, including the founding of the United Nations. Hamilton vividly recreates FDR’s decline and makes his accomplishments all the more impressive. Like its predecessors in the trilogy, this volume will reward readers of WWII and presidential history. Welcoming remarks by Harold Holzer, Roosevelt House Director; and Andrew Polsky, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Hunter College. Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, May 8, 2019.

• published: 23 May 2019
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