Five of the best books to understand why FDR was the greatest American president

Iwan Morgan is Professor of US Studies emeritus at the Institute of the Americas, University College London, UK. He is also a distinguished fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, UK. He was the recipient of the British Association of American Studies Honorary Fellowship in 2014, and winner of the Richard Neustadt Book Prize in 2010. He is the author of Reagan: American Icon (2016), named by The Times/Sunday Times as a Politics Book of the Year.

Morgan's new book is FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America.

[The Page 99 Test: FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America]

At Shepherd he tagged five of the best books to understand why FDR was the greatest American president, including:

Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court by Jeff Shesol

This is a fascinating account of FDR’s confrontation with the Supreme Court after it struck down many New Deal measures as unconstitutional expansions of federal authority. In response, he proposed a court-packing bill enabling him to appoint additional justices supportive of his policies, but this got nowhere in Congress because it threatened the constitutional separation of the powers. Nevertheless, Roosevelt still emerged victorious from the imbroglio. Wary of political backlash if it continuously opposed a popular president, the Supreme Court changed course to accept the New Deal once FDR abandoned efforts to pack it. This outcome preserved the judicial branch as a separate arm of the US government while upholding the ideal of a living Constitution whose interpretation changed with the times to make America’s democracy workable.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue