Derek Leebaert writes interesting and provocative books. In The Fifty-Year Wound, he assessed the triumphs but also the costs of America’s Cold War victory, which included the growing and seemingly permanent influence in Washington of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” and the “scientific-technological elite.” In Magic and Mayhem, Leebaert exposed the intellectual hubris and follies of our national security establishment in launching and fighting wars that we failed to win from Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, Leebaert in Unlikely Heroes, provides complex portraits of President Franklin Roosevelt and arguably his most important and influential New Dealers — Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, and Henry Wallace. It is a book that further undermines the conventional wisdom that Franklin Roosevelt was a great president.
Read MoreReview: New Book Shows ‘Greatness’ Only Took FDR So Far
