Rightful Heritage

Starred review from February 1, 2016
Brinkley (The Quiet World), a professor of history at Rice University, succeeds in showing that F.D.R. should be remembered for his extraordinary, often unsung role as a great conservationist, particularly of public lands. From childhood, Roosevelt was taken by the natural surroundings of his Hudson River home, and as he emerged to greatness he never lost his interest in preserving natural habitats as state and national parks, wildlife refuges, monuments, and forestsâespecially those lands near American cities. Brinkley, who in Wilderness Warrior wrote about Theodore Roosevelt's outdoorsmanship, makes a solid, if mostly unstated, case that F.D.R.'s conservationist record is as important as his cousin's. Brinkley also addresses the many people who joined F.D.R. in his environmental passions as he covers the lands the president and his administration set aside. He also shows how F.D.R., in his wartime presidency, was moving toward what Brinkley terms "global conservation." The book's detail can be overwhelming and, as with many works of modern American history, it's mostly narrative without a strong point of view, save for Brinkley's evident and justifiable admiration for F.D.R.'s achievements. But Brinkley's book adds significantly to knowledge of F.D.R. as both man and president, and ranks among the best books on this major historical figure.

February 15, 2016

Renowned presidential historian and television commentator Brinkley (history, Rice Univ.) is author of innumerable books including The Wilderness Warrior, that recount Theodore Roosevelt's role in environmental preservation. Here he focuses on the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) in the Civilian Conservation Corps, which restored and reforested the land and established dozens of park systems and scenic roadways. FDR was motivated by both his congenital love for nature and his acute political instincts to alleviate unemployment during the Great Depression, combining conservation policy with his overall economic strategy. He also benefited from the advice of his wife, Eleanor, politicians Harold Ickes and Gifford Pinchot, and Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas. Brinkley further studies less-examined figures such as the influential Rosalie Edge, a New York socialite and suffragist who lobbied the Audubon Society and managed the Emergency Conservation Committee. As with Theodore, FDR's policies navigated between practical uses of land and pristine protection. VERDICT With an accessible writing style, Brinkley crafts a detailed study that will attract legions of faithful readers. Scholars will savor the author's meticulous annotations in addition to endnotes highlighting a lesser-studied aspect of Franklin's legacy of governmental action, which is also briefly addressed in FDR and the Environment, edited by D. Woolner and H. Henderson. [See Prepub Alert, 9/28/15.]--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2016
Brinkley (History/Rice Univ.; Cronkite, 2012, etc.) returns with the provocative argument that Theodore Roosevelt was not the only environmentalist in the Roosevelt clan--far from it. "There was never a eureka moment that transformed Franklin D. Roosevelt into a dyed-in-the-wool forest conservationist," writes the author at the opening of this book. If there were, perhaps it would be at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, when the 11-year-old boy studied the thousands of specimens of flora and fauna on display, ardently taking in "the nucleus of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History." Having grown up with an interest in nature, and especially in birds, FDR took time as an officeholder in New York to preserve state lands and create parks; among his campaigns was one to convert the entire Catskills Mountains region into a protected conservation district, if not a state park, that mixed private and public ownership. As governor of New York, he assembled his first "brain trusts," and among the first of these was one devoted to forestry and agronomy. As president, he famously initiated such environmental programs as the Civilian Conservation Corps, using an earlier idea of "forestry as work-relief" to gain bipartisan support for other planks of the New Deal. In his biography of the secretary, T.H. Watkins gave Interior Secretary Harold Ickes most of the credit for the principal environmental accomplishments of the FDR administrations, but Brinkley makes clear that Roosevelt was there at the creation and took a personal interest and lobbied hard for his proposals. Not all of them succeeded, notes the author: of a proposed "national shoreline parks" measure, for instance, only one of a dozen sites, Cape Hatteras, came under national protection. Even so, dozens of grasslands, game refuges, forests, and other conservation units came into the commonweal thanks to FDR's work. Overlong, as are so many of Brinkley's books, but a brightly written, highly useful argument, especially in a time when the public domain is under siege.

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