Lynne Olson

Traces the crisis period leading up to America's entry in World War II, describing the nation's polarized interventionist and isolation factions as represented by the government, in the press and on the streets, in an account that explores the forefront roles of British-supporter President Roosevelt and isolationist Charles Lindbergh. (This book was previously featured in Forecast.)

Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

Those Angry Days

Andrew John Kinney

Great book. It is hard to appreciate, at this late date, how dead set against involvement in World War II the American people were until December 7th, 1941. Polls consistently showed the US public > 80% against getting involved in the "war in Europe", and Roosevelt was not willing to go against that sentiment in other than mostly symbolic ways, such as giving Britain obsolete destroyers under lend-lease. Truly, Roosevelt seemed to struggle to understand the situation in Europe, and he rarely got ahead of public opinion, but it is Lindbergh who comes off as the real villain in this story. My mother, who lived through WWII as a teenager in Washington, DC, was more than a little shocked by what she learned about Lindbergh in reading Those Angry Days. 

I have heard so many stories about this period from my father, now dead, and from my mother; this book brings back so many memories of those accounts from people who lived it that it made the book more immediate to me. Despite Roosevelt's vacillation over helping Britain, in some ways it is hard to see how he could have done more, or how he could have gotten more from Congress. After all, the draft law that was passed in 1940 to build up the Army and Navy was continued by Congress by only a one-vote margin - that's how divided American sentiment on preparedness was.

This book is an excellent preparation to read Olson's other wonderful book, Citizens of London, and her even better Last Hope Island, but even on it's own it is a really outstanding history of America just prior to WWII.

Andrew Reeves

Pierke Bosschieter

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND KIRKUS REVIEWS From the acclaimed author of Citizens of London comes the definitive account of the debate over American intervention in World War II—a bitter, sometimes violent clash of personalities and ideas that divided the nation and ultimately determined the fate of the free world. At the center of this controversy stood the two most famous men in America: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed the interventionist cause, and aviator Charles Lindbergh, who as unofficial leader and spokesman for America’s isolationists emerged as the president’s most formidable adversary. Their contest of wills personified the divisions within the country at large, and Lynne Olson makes masterly use of their dramatic personal stories to create a poignant and riveting narrative. While FDR, buffeted by political pressures on all sides, struggled to marshal public support for aid to Winston Churchill’s Britain, Lindbergh saw his heroic reputation besmirched—and his marriage thrown into turmoil—by allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer. Spanning the years 1939 to 1941, Those Angry Days vividly re-creates the rancorous internal squabbles that gripped the United States in the period leading up to Pearl Harbor. After Germany vanquished most of Europe, America found itself torn between its traditional isolationism and the urgent need to come to the aid of Britain, the only country still battling Hitler. The conflict over intervention was, as FDR noted, “a dirty fight,” rife with chicanery and intrigue, and Those Angry Days recounts every bruising detail. In Washington, a group of high-ranking military officers, including the Air Force chief of staff, worked to sabotage FDR’s pro-British policies. Roosevelt, meanwhile, authorized FBI wiretaps of Lindbergh and other opponents of intervention. At the same time, a covert British operation, approved by the president, spied on antiwar groups, dug up dirt on congressional isolationists, and planted propaganda in U.S. newspapers. The stakes could not have been higher. The combatants were larger than life. With the immediacy of a great novel, Those Angry Days brilliantly recalls a time fraught with danger when the future of democracy and America’s role in the world hung in the balance. Praise for Those Angry Days “Powerfully [re-creates] this tenebrous era . . . Olson captures in spellbinding detail the key figures in the battle between the Roosevelt administration and the isolationist movement.”—The New York Times Book Review “Popular history at its most riveting . . . In Those Angry Days, journalist-turned-historian Lynne Olson captures [the] period in a fast-moving, highly readable narrative punctuated by high drama.”—Associated Press

Those Angry Days Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

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