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More about the film F.D.R.
Imagine if, in the past 12 years -- just 12 years -- the United States had been through the worst depression in history and the worst war, and at the center of this great and terrible drama the whole while was the same indomitable figure serving as leader of the country longer than anyone ever. In those dozen years, a nation of millions of people without work, without hope, a nation of failed banks and failed farms and silent factories became the most productive industrial power in history. In that time, the United States went from a nation of virtually no military power at all to the greatest military power the world had ever seen. Social Security, rural electrification, the creation of the atomic bomb, the defeat of fascism all happened then, all in the extraordinary era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The place F.D.R. holds in history, the familiarity of the great moments, the great speeches, have served to keep him remote, not quite human, and human he was -- flawed, inconsistent, often deceitful. ''The trouble with the President,'' Senator Harry Truman once observed, ''is that he lies.'' But this human Roosevelt was also winsome, brave and a great man, and given what we now know about his health about how pathetically vulnerable he was, his example is all the more heroic.
Franklin Roosevelt was also highly adept at the job of being president. We Americans like people who are good at what they do, and he was as good as they get. It endeared him to the great majority of the country then -- and it accounts in large part for our continuing fascination in his story.
Film Credits
Credits for the American Experience documentary program F.D.R..
Program Transcript
F.D.R. transcript.
Interviews
Read and listen to what historians have to say about F.D.R..
Further Reading
A list of related books, articles, and Web sites.
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