For all the books written about FDR, there's room on the shelf for a great one-volume life that does full justice to who he was, what he overcame and what he achieved. This one isn't it, though it's ...

David Pietrusza masterfully ties together the different personalities and parties surrounding the president, while Roosevelt himself appears in cameos as an opportunist looking to see what works.

(“FDR” by Jean Edward Smith, Random House, 858 pages, $35). In January 1943, after meeting with Franklin Roosevelt at Casablanca on the African coast to plot future military operations during the ...