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 ...

I always try to be as generous as possible to a fellow biographer of the same subject, but I cannot claim that this book brings much that is new to the extensive FDR literature. It is in fact a ...

As scholars compare President Barack Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt, a timely new biography by former Washington Post reporter Kirstin Downey reminds us that history often overlooks those who do the ...

“The Woman Behind the New Deal” (Doubleday, 398 pages, $35), by Kirstin Downey: Reading the biography of FDR’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins brings to mind the old saying about how Ginger Rogers had ...

How can one write history so that it seems like a thriller? How does one write a biography without making the subject the centerpiece of the narrative? I have no idea if David Pietrusza asked himself ...

Crime fiction paid off for E.L. Doctorow Monday with a National Book Critics Circle award for ”Billy Bathgate,” a novel about a teenage boy who joins the infamous Dutch Schultz gang. ”Billy Bathgate” ...