Overview

May 1938. Franklin Delano Roosevelt-recently reelected to a second term as president-sat in the Oval Office and contemplated two possibilities: the rule of fascism overseas, and a third term. With Hitler's reach extending into Austria, and with the atrocities of World War I still fresh in the American memory, Roosevelt faced the question that would prove one of the most defining in American history: whether to once again go to war in Europe. In The Sphinx, Nicholas Wapshott recounts how an ambitious and resilient Roosevelt-nicknamed ""the Sphinx"" for his cunning, cryptic rapport with the press-devised and doggedly pursued a strategy to sway the American people to abandon isolationism and take up the mantle of the world's most powerful nation. Chief among Roosevelt's antagonists was his friend Joseph P. Kennedy, a stock market magnate and the patriarch of what was to become one of the nation's most storied dynasties. Kennedy's financial, political, and personal interests aligned him with a war-weary American public, and he counted among his isolationist allies no less than Walt Disney, William Randolph Hearst, and Henry Ford-prominent businessmen who believed America had no business in conflicts across the Atlantic. The ensuing battle-waged with fiery rhetoric, agile diplomacy, media sabotage, and petty political antics-would land US troops in Europe within three years, secure Roosevelt's legacy, and set a standard for American military strategy for years to come. With millions of lives-and a future paradigm of foreign intervention-hanging in the balance, The Sphinx captures a political giant at the height of his powers and an American identity crisis that continues to this day.

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9780393088885

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Reviews

Wapshott sees Roosevelt as a master politician, dissembling when necessary, shrewdly disarming opponents with both tough rhetoric and humor, and slowly leading a reluctant public in the desired direction. This is an informative and timely revisiting of the era in light of our current intervention in the Middle East. --Jay Freeman

Nicholas Wapshott superbly re-creates the fierce debates of those momentous days, when the fate of the world genuinely did teeter on the brink of catastrophe. --Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War and Masters and Commanders

Wapshott successfully unravels the complex sequence of negotiations, hints, half-promises, and cunning that brought Roosevelt the Democratic nomination, re-election to the Presidency, a massive rearmament program, and support for an embattled Britain.

Author Information

Nicholas Wapshott’s many books include biographies of Margaret Thatcher and Carol Reed, Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, and The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II. He lives in New York City.

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