David Beito's path-breaking new book brings to bear the latest historical scholarship to shed light on the life and achievements of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Professor Beito traces the irresistible political rise of Roosevelt, a scion of inherited wealth who never posed as a man of the people but was always perceived as a genial aristocrat. As well as eyebrow-raising disclosures on FDR's private life, Beito's gripping narrative brings out Roosevelt's ruthless opportunism, and his susceptibility to all the prejudicial views fashionable at the time, on race, sex, nationalism, and economics.