Book Notes: Hard Bargain by Robert Shogan

Hard Bargain

I just finished reading Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill's Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency by Robert Shogan (1999 trade paperback, ISBN: 0813336953). It's a good read, but not a fast one. I'd recommend it for history buffs, WW II military buffs, and anybody trying to get a handle on how the United States government morphed into its present shape and size.

Up until the last chapter it's a pretty straightforward, well-documented look at history as it unfolded rather than any sort of advocacy book. (In the last chapter Shogan gives an overview of what he sees as oversteps made by more recent Presidents using FDR's actions as precedent, and lets loose with what he thinks we should take away as the main lessons from all this, and what he thinks we should do about it.)

Shogan provides analysis, but is amazingly even-handed overall, as far as I could see. As it says in the Author's Note:

...Those who seek either to sanctify or demonize Roosevelt will find little support here. Neither angel nor devil, FDR emerges from these pages as a politician, seeking after the light as he saw it, but also seeking after reelection. This is not the story of villains against heroes, etched in black and white. The fundamental contest here is between principle and expediency, which can be glimpsed only in various shades of grey. It is my hope that the past seen through this prism can help to illuminate the future.

I don't know about the future, but I kept running into bits and pieces that seemed to help explain some of what is going on these days.

This book has extensive endnotes - a fact I didn't tumble to right away because the text isn't littered with numbers. There's also an extensive bibliography (roughly four pages for books, two pages of other sources), as well as an index.

The book is full of interesting vignettes, fascinating people, information that has come to light since the declassification of World War II documents, and quotes from contemporary sources. I find myself wanting to follow up on people and events to which I was only introduced here: "Wild Bill" Donovan and his unofficial-official end run around Joseph Kennedy, the situation around Trinidad during the war, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter's active role in advising people in the administration and also all those proteges he steered into the executive branch, and also, surprisingly enough, I'd now like to learn more about British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. (Yes, I knew about Neville Chamberlain, but I didn't know FDR sent him a I-think-you're-right cable after the Munich meeting where Britain and France agreed to let Hitler have his way with Czechoslovakia. Wait a minute, let me find the text. Ah, here it is, page 48. FDR cabled: "I fully share your hope and belief that there exists today the greatest opportunity in years for the establishment of a new order based on peace and law." Both men, of course, found out soon enough that their hopes were ill-founded.)

Hard Bargain was originally published 1995. The 1999 edition was issued with a new preface on "Clinton and the Bombing in Kosovo."

More on the author: 'Bad News' is an August 21, 2001, NewsHour transcript of a discussion by Robert Shogan, Richard Reeves and Terrence Smith about how well the media covered the 2000 elections in the United States, which used Shogan's ninth book Bad News: Where the Press Goes Wrong in the Making of the President as its starting point.