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FDR, the War President, 1940-1943: A History. By Kenneth S. Davis. (New York: Random House, 2000. 848 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-679-- 41542-4.)
Readers of Kenneth S. Davis's magisterial biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt will be glad to see that the passing of the accomplished historian has not prevented emergence of the fifth volume in that extensive saga. For this credit can be shared by the literary executors Ralph and Mary Ellen Titus and Davis's publisher, Random House. Their efforts have created a work of identical quality and feel to its predecessors, in which Davis continues to explore the themes he has in the past covered at great length.
The author picks up the story immediately after the election of 1940, bringing an exhausted Roosevelt back to Washington on his private rail car only to face the need for important decisions in foreign affairs made necessary by the raging war in...