Franklin and Winston

Roosevelt and Churchill became friends through their mutual defense of the free world during WWII. The detailed story of how that friendship unfolded and deepened reveals their personalities and the social processes they used in making their mega-decisions. This salutary biography challenges the narrator's skills with dual principals, but Grover Gardner's comfortable pace smooths the jumps between the two lives and two governments into a consistent narrative. Gardner doesn't do characterizations, thereby missing some opportunities for color in the abundant quotations by men who loved to talk. Experienced biography aficionados looking for a low-cal intellectual dessert should taste this plethora of minutiae on two twentieth-century titans. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

August 4, 2003
Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek
(editor, Voices in Our Blood), delivers an eloquent, well-researched account of one of the 20th century's most vital friendships: that between FDR and Winston Churchill. Both men were privileged sons of wealth, and both had forebears (in Churchill's case, Leonard Jerome) prominent in New York society during the 19th century. Both enjoyed cocktails and a smoke. And both were committed to the Anglo-American alliance. Indeed, Roosevelt and Churchill each believed firmly that the "English-speaking peoples" represented the civilized world's first, best hope to counter and conquer the barbarism of the Axis. Meacham uses previously untapped archives and has interviewed surviving Roosevelt and Churchill staffers present at the great men's meetings in Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca and Tehran. Thus he has considerable new ground to break, new anecdotes to offer and prescient observations to make. Throughout, Meacham highlights Roosevelt's and Churchill's shared backgrounds as sons of the ruling elite, their genuine, gregarious friendship, and their common worldview during staggeringly troubled times. To meet with Roosevelt, Churchill recalled years later, "with all his buoyant sparkle, his iridescence," was like "opening a bottle of champagne"—a bottle from which the tippling Churchill desperately needed a good long pull through 1940 and '41, as the Nazis savaged Europe and tortured British civilians with air attacks. One comes away from this account convinced of the "Great Personality" theory of history and gratified that Roosevelt and Churchill possessed the character that they did and came to power at a time when no other partnership would do.

NEWSWEEK Managing Editor Jon Meacham explores the enduring friendship that developed between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill during the course of their careers. Beyond ushering the world through the second great war, the two leaders developed an intimate relationship that led to scores of personal correspondences and the spending of holidays together. Tony Award winner Len Cariou reads the account in a warm, stately voice, altering his tone and accent just slightly to differentiate the comments of the two men. Cariou captures with ease the personalities of these elite world leaders and the characters who surrounded them. With just the right amount of drama and depth, Cariou and Meacham portray the unique bond between two of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century. H.L.S. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine