Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World
A hallmark of FDR’s leadership style was his aversion to operating through bureaucratic channels, as Fullilove’s book illustrates. Focusing on FDR’s diplomacy of 1940–41, it features the president’s penchant for relying on personal representatives, who bypassed the Department of State and reported directly to FDR. In this case, their task was to see if Britain in 1940 and the Soviet Union in 1941 could withstand German attack and would, therefore, be worth supporting. After biographical summaries of five envoys—Sumner Welles, William Donovan, Harry Hopkins, Wendell Willkie, and Averill Harriman—Fullilove propels them on their missions to London and Moscow, dwelling almost as much on the details of airplanes, ships, and office decor as on the substance of their talks with Churchill and Stalin. In passing, Fullilove alludes to America’s isolationist sentiment (see Those Angry Days, by Lynne Olson, 2013), which induced FDR to use indirection, as in the deployment of these unofficial emissaries, to lead America toward intervention in the war. With his focus on personalities, Fullilove will hook readers interested in the leading figures of WWII diplomacy. --Gilbert Taylor