Overview

An anarchist assassin, demagogues, and a plotted coup d'état--the forgotten history of the forces that lashed out against FDR as he took the helm of a country on the brink. In March 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt finally became the nation's thirty-second president. The man swept in by a landslide four months earlier now took charge of a country in the grip of panic brought on by economic catastrophe. Though no one yet knew it-not even Roosevelt-it was a radical moment in America. And with all of its unmistakable resonance with events of today, it is a cautionary tale. The Plots Against the President follows Roosevelt as he struggled to right the teetering nation, armed with little more than indomitable optimism and the courage to try anything. His bold New Deal experiments provoked a backlash from both extremes of the political spectrum. Wall Street bankers threatened by FDR's policies made common cause with populist demagogues like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin. But just how far FDR's enemies were willing to go to thwart him has never been fully explored. Two startling events that have been largely ignored by historians frame Sally Denton's swift, tense narrative of a year of fear: anarchist Giuseppe Zangara's assassination attempt on Roosevelt, and a plutocrats' plot to overthrow the government that would come to be known as the Wall Street Putsch. The Plots Against the President throws light on the darkest chapter of the Depression and the moments when the fate of the American republic hung in the balance.

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9781733658003

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Denton's The Plots Against the President details in a brisk, cogent narrative what Roosevelt faced after he won election against Herbert Hoover that November. As with Obama, the president-elect seemed to infuriate many on the right, whose criticisms often contradicted one another. Roosevelt was (in turn): socialist? communist? fascist? His enemies painted him as either an intellectual lightweight, incapable of addressing the nation's financial emergency, or an evil mastermind, a traitor to his class, a tool of foreign interests. --The Boston Globe Readable and informative ... valuable reminder of how the four years following 1932 steered America in an uncharted direction. --The Plots Against the President, The Wall Street Journal A thoroughly readable primer on political discourse in the early years of the Great Depresssion. --The Plots Against the President, The Washington Post Two weeks before FDR's 1933 inauguration, an assassin fired five shots at him, narrowly missing. A year later, a retired general claimed several wealthy businessmen had asked him join a plot to overthrow the government. The media treated it as a joke, but historian and public policy expert, Denton's research indicates otherwise. --The Plots Against the President, Publishers Weekly

"""Denton's The Plots Against the President details in a brisk, cogent narrative what Roosevelt faced after he won election against Herbert Hoover that November. As with Obama, the president-elect seemed to infuriate many on the right, whose criticisms often contradicted one another. Roosevelt was (in turn): socialist? communist? fascist? His enemies painted him as either an intellectual lightweight, incapable of addressing the nation's financial emergency, or an evil mastermind, a traitor to his class, a tool of foreign interests."" --The Boston Globe ""Readable and informative ... valuable reminder of how the four years following 1932 steered America in an uncharted direction."" --The Plots Against the President, The Wall Street Journal ""A thoroughly readable primer on political discourse in the early years of the Great Depresssion."" --The Plots Against the President, The Washington Post ""Two weeks before FDR's 1933 inauguration, an assassin fired five shots at him, narrowly missing. A year later, a retired general claimed several wealthy businessmen had asked him join a plot to overthrow the government. The media treated it as a joke, but historian and public policy expert, Denton's research indicates otherwise."" --The Plots Against the President, Publishers Weekly"

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