Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905

(Paperback)

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From revered and award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward, an astonishing, novelistic account--the most complete to date--of the early life and lineage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. First time in Vintage trade paperback. Before Pearl Harbor, before polio and his entry into politics, FDR was a handsome, pampered, but strong-willed youth, the center of a rarefied world. In Before the Trumpet, the award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward transports the reader to that world-Hyde Park on the Hudson and Campobello Island, Groton and Harvard and the Continent-to recreate as never before the formative years of the man who would become the 20th century's greatest president. Here, drawn from thousands of original documents (many never previously published), is a richly-detailed, intimate biography, its central figure surrounded by a colorful cast that includes an opium smuggler and a pious headmaster; Franklin's distant cousin, Theodore and his remarkable mother, Sara;and the still-more remarkable young woman he wooed and won, his cousin Eleanor. This is a tale that would grip the reader even if its central character had not grown up to be FDR.

Reviews

Suffused with magic . . . a wonderful book. John Lukacs, The Philadelphia Enquirer

An engrossing biography . . . Magnificent social history . . . a triumph of scholarly detective work.The New Yorker

The freshest and most penetrating study of the young FDR. Chicago Sunday Tribune

The texture is . . . richer, the detail more finely tuned than in any other portrait. The New York Times Book Review

Quite the best thing I have ever read about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. The wonder is that [it] unearths so much new and revealing materialletters, conversations, insights . . . appealing and inspiring.Atlanta Constitution

Author Bio

Geoffrey C. Ward is the coauthor of The Civil War (with Ken Burns and Ric Burns), and the author of A First-Class Temperament- The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and the 1990 Francis Parkman Prize.