Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known by his initials FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. The longest-serving U.S. president, he is the only president to have served more than two terms. His initial two terms were centered on combating the Great Depression, while his third and fourth saw him shift his focus to America's involvement in World War II.
John Nance Garner III, known among his contemporaries as "Cactus Jack", was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 32nd vice president of the United States from 1933 to 1941 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A member of the Democratic Party, Garner served as the 39th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1931 to 1933, having been a United States representative from Texas from 1903 to 1933. Garner and Schuyler Colfax are the only politicians to have served as presiding officers of both chambers of the United States Congress as speaker of the House and vice president of the United States.
James Albert Michener was an American writer. He wrote more than 40 books, most of which were long, fictional family sagas covering the lives of many generations, set in particular geographic locales and incorporating detailed history. Many of his works were bestsellers and were chosen by the Book of the Month Club. He was also known for the meticulous research that went into his books.
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. As of April 2016, it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. With the 1995 buyout of its longtime rival the Houston Post, the Chronicle became Houston's newspaper of record.
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is an American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. Applebaum also holds Polish citizenship.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger's work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II. Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin is an American biographer, historian, former sports journalist, and political commentator. She has written biographies of numerous U.S. presidents. Goodwin's book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995. Goodwin produced the American television miniseries Washington. She was also executive producer of "Abraham Lincoln,” a 2022 docudrama on the History Channel. This latter series was based on Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times.
David Hume Kennerly is an American photographer. He won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his portfolio of photographs of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden. He has photographed every American president since Lyndon B Johnson. He is the first presidential scholar at the University of Arizona.
James MacGregor Burns was an American historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies. He was the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1971 Burns received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in History and Biography for his work on America's 32nd president, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom.
Robert A. Dallek is an American historian specializing in the presidents of the United States, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
Jon Ellis Meacham is an American writer, reviewer, historian and presidential biographer who is serving as the Canon Historian of the Washington National Cathedral since November 7, 2021. A former executive editor and executive vice president at Random House, he is a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor to Time magazine, and a former editor-in-chief of Newsweek. He is the author of several books. He won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. He holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University.
Lawrence Wright is an American writer and journalist, who is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as the author of the 2006 nonfiction book Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright is also known for his work with documentarian Alex Gibney who directed film versions of Wright's one man show My Trip to Al-Qaeda and his book Going Clear. His 2020 novel, The End of October, a thriller about a pandemic, was released in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, to generally positive reviews.
Samuel Flagg Bemis was an American historian and biographer. For many years he taught at Yale University. He was also president of the American Historical Association and a specialist in American diplomatic history. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes. Jerald A. Combs says he was "the greatest of all historians of early American diplomacy."
Glenn Frankel is an American author and academic, journalist and winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He spent 27 years with The Washington Post, where he was bureau chief in Richmond (Va.), Southern Africa, Jerusalem and London, and editor of The Washington PostMagazine. He served as a visiting journalism professor at Stanford University and as Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Author of five books, his latest works explore the making of an iconic American movie in the context of the historical era it reflects. In 2018 Frankel was named a Motion Picture Academy Film Scholar. He was named a 2021-2 research fellow of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York for a book about Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
The 1940 Democratic National Convention was held at the Chicago Stadium in Chicago, Illinois from July 15 to July 18, 1940. The convention resulted in the nomination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace from Iowa was nominated for vice president.
Gleaves Whitney has been the executive director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation since September 2020. Prior to that, he was the director of Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies beginning in July 2003. He has authored or edited 17 books. Whitney is also a senior scholar at The Imaginative Conservative in Houston, Texas, the first senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, a member of the college of fellows at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, a member of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library's Leadership Development Committee, and a scholar with the Wyoming Catholic College committee of advisors. His work has appeared on blogs and in numerous newspapers, magazines, and journals.
The Mike Wallace Interview is a series of 30-minute television interviews conducted by host Mike Wallace from 1957 to 1960. From 1957 to 1959, they were carried by the ABC American Broadcasting Company television network, and in 1959–1960, they were offered by the NTA Film Network.
John Milton Cooper Jr. is an American historian, author, and educator. He specializes in late 19th and early 20th-century American political and diplomatic history with a particular focus on presidential history. His 2009 biography of Woodrow Wilson was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and biographer Patricia O'Toole has called him "the world's greatest authority on Woodrow Wilson." Cooper is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
William Smith White was an American journalist between the 1920s and 1970s. During his career, White worked with the Austin Statesman from 1926 to 1945 and the New York Times from 1945 to 1958. Upon leaving the New York Times in 1958, White spent the remainder of his journalism career with the United Feature Syndicate until his 1973 retirement. Outside of journalism, White was a biographer who won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for The Taft Story. After writing works on Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson throughout the 1960s, White received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969.
