BROADCASTS.com

aPhoto:  Public Domain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Panay_sinking_after_Japanese_air_attack.jpg) view terms File:USS Panay sinking after Japanese air attack.jpg Created: 12 December 1937 http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules Twitter: @BatchelorShow The Sphinx: 1 of 4: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II  Audible Audiobook – Unabridged.  Nicholas Wapshott (https://www.amazon.com/Nicholas-Wapshott/e/B001JP7O9K/ref=dp_byline_cont_audible_1) (Author), Bronson Pinchot (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_audible_2?ie=UTF8&search-alias=audible&field-keywords=Bronson+Pinchot) (Narrator), Audible Studios (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_audible_3?ie=UTF8&search-alias=audible&field-keywords=Audible+Studios) (Publisher) https://www.amazon.com/Sphinx-Franklin-Roosevelt-Isolationists-World/dp/B00QQWZ5FQ/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Before Pearl Harbor, before the Nazi invasion of Poland, America teetered between the desire for isolation and the threat of world war. May 1938. Franklin Delano Roosevelt - recently reelected to a second term as president - sat in the Oval Office and contemplated two possibilities: the rule of fascism overseas, and a third term. With Hitler's reach extending into Austria, and with the atrocities of World War I still fresh in the American memory, Roosevelt faced the question that would prove one of the most defining in American history: whether to once again go to war in Europe.  In The Sphinx, Nicholas Wapshott recounts how an ambitious and resilient Roosevelt - nicknamed "the Sphinx" for his cunning, cryptic rapport with the press - devised and doggedly pursued a strategy to sway the American people to abandon isolationism and take up the mantle of the world's most powerful nation. Chief among Roosevelt's antagonists was his friend Joseph P. Kennedy, a stock market magnate and the patriarch of what was to become one of the nation's most storied dynasties. Kennedy's financial, political, and personal interests aligned him with a war-weary American public, and he counted among his isolationist allies no less than Walt Disney, William Randolph Hearst, and Henry Ford - prominent businessmen who believed America had no business in conflicts across the Atlantic. The ensuing battle - waged with fiery rhetoric, agile diplomacy, media sabotage, and petty political antics - would land US troops in Europe within three years, secure Roosevelt's legacy, and set a standard for American military strategy for years to come. With millions of lives - and a future paradigm of foreign intervention - hanging in the balance, The Sphinx captures a political giant at the height of his powers and an American identity crisis that continues to this day.