The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942

Longlisted for the National Book Award

“This bold argument . . . will undoubtedly change the way we see Franklin Roosevelt.”
—Christian Science Monitor

“Masterly.”
—Wall Street Journal

A dramatic, eye-opening account of how FDR took personal charge of the military direction of World War II

Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving Roosevelt aides and family members, The Mantle of Command offers a radical new perspective on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s masterful — and underappreciated — leadership of the Allied war effort. After the disaster of Pearl Harbor, we see Roosevelt devising a global strategy that will defeat Hitler and the Japanese, rescue Churchill and the British people, and quell a near insurrection of his own American generals and War Department. All the while, Hamilton’s account drives toward Operation Torch — the invasion of French Northwest Africa — and the outcome of the war hangs in the balance. The Mantle of Command is an intimate, sweeping look at a great President in history’s greatest conflict.