For all the books written about FDR, there's room on the shelf for a great one-volume life that does full justice to who he was, what he overcame and what he achieved. This one isn't it, though it's ...

I always try to be as generous as possible to a fellow biographer of the same subject, but I cannot claim that this book brings much that is new to the extensive FDR literature. It is in fact a ...

As scholars compare President Barack Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt, a timely new biography by former Washington Post reporter Kirstin Downey reminds us that history often overlooks those who do the ...

“The Woman Behind the New Deal” (Doubleday, 398 pages, $35), by Kirstin Downey: Reading the biography of FDR’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins brings to mind the old saying about how Ginger Rogers had ...

Crime fiction paid off for E.L. Doctorow Monday with a National Book Critics Circle award for ”Billy Bathgate,” a novel about a teenage boy who joins the infamous Dutch Schultz gang. ”Billy Bathgate” ...