The Roosevelts

A frail, asthmatic young Theodore Roosevelt transforms himself into a vigorous champion of the strenuous life, survives the loss of one great love and finds another, leads men into battle and then rises like a rocket to become the youngest president in American history at 42. Meanwhile, Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins to think he might one day follow in his follows his older cousin’s footsteps.

Theodore Roosevelt transforms the office and makes himself perhaps the best-loved president. FDR courts and wins Eleanor Roosevelt. Together, they begin a family and Franklin enters a law firm, but when he is offered a chance to run for the New York state senate he jumps at the chance – after making sure his Republican cousin has no objection to his running as a Democrat.

TR leads a Progressive crusade that splits his own party, undertakes a deadly expedition into the South American jungle, campaigns for American entry into World War One – and is made to pay a terrible personal price. Franklin masters wartime Washington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. TR’s death at 60 is almost universally mourned, but it also provides Franklin with a golden opportunity.

FDR runs for Vice President in 1920 and is assured of a brighter future until polio devastates him. He spends seven years struggling to walk again, while Eleanor builds a political life of her own. FDR returns in 1928 and, as Governor of New York, acts with such vigor during the first years of the Great Depression that the Democrats turn to him as their presidential nominee in 1932.

FDR brings the same optimism to the White House that his cousin TR displayed. Aimed at ending the Depression, his sweeping New Deal restores the people’s self-confidence. Eleanor rejects the traditional role of first lady and becomes political force in her own right. As the decade ends, FDR faces two questions: whether to run for an unprecedented third term and how to deal with the rise of Hitler.

FDR shatters the third-term tradition, prepares a country to enter World War II, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor helps set the course toward Allied victory. Meanwhile, Eleanor struggles to keep New Deal reforms alive in wartime. Diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 1943 and with the War still raging, FDR resolves to conceal his condition and run for a fourth term.

Frail and failing but determined to see the War through to victory, FDR wins re-election and begins planning for a peaceful postwar world. But a cerebral hemorrhage kills him at 63. After her husband’s death, Eleanor Roosevelt proves herself a shrewd politician and a skilled negotiator in her own right. When she dies in 1962 she is mourned everywhere as the First Lady of the World.