Scorpions

Feldman, Noah. (2010). Scorpions: the battles and triumphs of FDR's great Supreme Court justices. New York : Twelve.

A magnificent history of the four great Justices that FDR appointed to the Supreme Court. The narrative moves along, and centers on the four; to a significant degree FDR is a supporting actor. Frankfurter, a self-designated heir to Brandeis and Holmes, was appointed from Harvard Law, from where he had already conducted a correspondence with FDR. Starting out a liberal, he carved out a philosophy of judicial restraint (curious how history twists and turns), only to wind up his career as a conservative. Black was a Senator, a liberal, a former KKK member. Douglas was a Westerner, a prodigy, who had been appointed to the SEC on Joe Kennedy's recommendation; he never gave up his political ambitions, not until Truman beat him out for the VP nomination in 1944. Jackson was the last Justice appointed to not have graduated from law school. He carved out a judicial philosophy based on common sense and moderation. The 4 came from different places, too: FF from Austria; HB from Alabama; WOD from Washington; RJ from upstate NY.

Wonderful book.

One curiosity is how libraries classify it: various libraries have it at 347.7326 (Civil procedure and courts); some at 923.47 (general biography range of numbers); one as 920

The woman behind the New Deal

Downey, Kirstin. (2009). The woman behind the New Deal : the life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and his moral conscience. New York: Nan A. Talese

Other than the name, I knew nothing about Frances Perkins. Now I know a great deal. She became interested in social work very early in her life, worked with Hull House in Chicago (with Jane Addams), and wound up in New York. The day of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire she was in a friend's house on Washington Square North, and ran to the location of the fire (on Washington Square East -- I actually took an NYU course in a building in that same location).

FP met FDR early on in New York government. She knew Robert Moses before he worked in State government. She knew Al Smith. When FDR won the Presidency, he appointed her Labor Secretary, the first woman to ever serve in the Cabinet. She accomplished a great deal, indeed.

The book contends that Social Security, Unemployment insurance and others New Deal programs were her ideas that FDR adopted. I have never read about that before. The book also contends that when FDR told Cabinet member of the Pearl Harbor attack, FP suspected that he had known about it, for he did not show the same surprise and shock that other Cabinet members showed.

Revealing, sympathetic, the book does a good job of uncovering a forgotten figure who played an important role in 20th century America. Indeed, the world: she was instrumental in saving LIO people from Europe, and got Churchill and FDR to support it after the War.

In her personal life, FP was quite unlucky. Both her husband and her daughter were bipolar, in an age when there were no medicines to effectively deal with the illness. She did make friends, close personal friends with several women. Mary Harriman Rumsey, older sister of Averell, in particular, was very close friends with FP. They shared a house for some time.

Yet about halfway through, the book gets sloppy in its assertions. I'd like to see more documentation on some of the declarations made.

And then there is the Venona Project.

"The Americans and British long had been skeptical about Soviet intentions. As a result, between 1942 and 1945, the United States and Great Britain engaged in the Venona Project, intercepting encrypted cables between Russian intelligence agencies and Soviet spies based in America. They began successfully decrypting these messages in 1946. National security officials kept the information secret, but released some facts through the FBI, and through that agency to Truman.The deciphered messages exposed several hundred Americans, including some government officials, as communist spies."

Assassination in Algiers: Churchill, Roosevelt, de Gaulle, and the murder of Admiral Darlan. (1990). Anthony Verrier. New York: W.W. Norton.

I read about this book in the Jean Smith biography of FDR.

That Man

Incomplete at the time of his death in 1954 and only recently discovered, Jackson's elegant memoir of his years with FDR is an invaluable addition to the literature. Jackson, who served as Roosevelt's Attorney General before his appointment to the Supreme Court, was present for everything from discussions of high policy to poker games with the president to screenings of home movies of the Yalta conference. A sound civil libertarian, Jackson often disagreed with FDR's policies, and his portrait, though warm and intimate, is all the more impressive because of this balance of faults and abilities. Jackson's observations of the time and of the many people who interacted with FDR are so deftly drawn that readers share the author's sentiment, upon hearing of the president's death, that "an era has come to an end." The editing by Barrett (law, St. John's Univ.), who fleshed out the unfinished work with documents and other writings by Jackson, is remarkable in its own right; the footnotes themselves constitute a mini-history of the FDR presidency. Summing Up: Essential. All levels and libraries. Copyright 2004 American Library Association.

Intelligent, informed thoughts on FDR’s presidency by a close associate: Solicitor General, Attorney General, and finally Supreme Court Justice Jackson (1892–1954).Written in the early 1950s but only recently discovered by editor Barrett among Jackson’s personal papers, the manuscript considers FDR in separate chapters as a politician, lawyer, commander-in-chief, administrator, economist, leader, and friend. Although the text has a finished quality, it also has the brevity of quick notes jotted down with examples of Roosevelt’s strengths and weaknesses in each department. Jackson promises readers the "testimony of an interested witness" and takes seasoned measure of a man so often "the subject of undiscriminating idolatry or of unreasoning hate." What the author saw was a self-confident gentleman, brimming with intellectual capital, informal but dignified, capable of being mercurial and of trespassing on legislative turf, as when he tried to remove policymakers outside executive agencies. Jackson unveils episodes of step-by-step policy formation, as when the administration exchanged destroyers for naval and air stations in the Atlantic, bypassing (with dubious constitutionality) Congressional approval. He also points out, again with examples, Roosevelt's shortcomings: FDR was "impatient of the slow and exacting judicial process"--impatient, indeed, with anything that was slow and exacting--and Jackson remarks that, for someone who effected radical changes on the economic landscape, his friend’s vision "did not impress me as being grounded in economic theory or practice." Rather, FDR made his decisions based on political judgment and social philosophy, which he was able to communicate to the man on the street. Jackson writes smoothly and manages to compress many angles of complex material into a brief text.Not profoundly revelatory, but the intimate look into the way decisions were made brings Roosevelt very much into human focus. (24 halftones, not seen)Book-of-the-Month Club/History Book Club main selection Copyright Kirkus 2003 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.