Word: retrospective
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
ROOSEVELT IN RETROSPECT (410 pp ]-John Gunther-Harper...
...Roosevelt in Retrospect, Gunther has brought these talents to bear on the complex personality of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In spite of his avowed aim of getting at his subject's "root qualities and basic sources of power," Gunther has conspicuously failed to "pin something of his great substance against the wall of time." Getting inside a man is something quite different from getting into a continent or a country; it takes more than visas. What Gunther has achieved is a lively journalistic profile pieced together with materials largely lifted from the mushrooming literature on F.D.R. and loosely held together...
Poodles & Poker. Roosevelt in Retrospect nonetheless has Gunther's reader-tested qualities of liveliness and high quota of anecdote. Example: F.D.R. was economical. As a young man he disliked paying more than $2 for a shirt, and in the White House he charged Mrs. Harry Hopkins 50? a day for the keep of her poodle. Gunther names the only man who ever called F.D.R. an s.o.b. to his face: Leon Henderson. Myrna Loy was the President's favorite actress, and he loved poker. He saved and filed Christmas cards and he kept the bullet fired...
...such tidbits and for its admiring enthusiasm, Roosevelt in Retrospect will be attractive reading for a ready-made audience. But it was F.D.R. himself who used to put off would-be biographers with the warning: "Let's wait a hundred years...
...Retrospect. When the returns had finally been tabulated, these points were worth noting...