This author has spent his career, 41 years in college teaching, more intimate with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal and World War II policies than with any other historical figure.
Exactly 43 years ago, this author spent time doing research at the FDR Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, just outside Poughkeepsie, for his doctoral dissertation, which was completed in 1975, and published in 1981 by The Johns Hopkins University Press under the title: TWILIGHT OF PROGRESSIVISM: THE WESTERN REPUBLICAN SENATORS AND THE NEW DEAL.
This coming fall term, the author will again teach a course on FDR, THE NEW DEAL, AND WORLD WAR II, at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.
This author has, therefore, spent his life dedicated to study of FDR, and he has always taught that FDR was the second greatest President to Abraham Lincoln!
This day of this posting, the author is with his younger son at the FDR Library and Museum for the first time in 43 years, and exactly one month after its first renovation since its opening in 1941!
The thrill, the excitement, of this return visit, now as a tourist, not a scholar, is overwhelming, and makes me ever more appreciate the greatness of this man, who did more to change America in domestic and foreign policy than ANY President has ever done, including Abraham Lincoln!
Sure, FDR had his faults and shortcomings, as all Presidents, and really all of us, have, but still he is the most transformational President in American history,and richly deserves constant study and interpretation, which I have, and will continue to do, throughout my life of teaching, scholarship, and blogging!