How was FDR''s image constructed-by himself and others-as such a powerful icon in American memory?
In polls of historians and political scientists, Franklin Delano Roosevelt consistently ranks among the top three American presidents. Roosevelt enjoyed an enormous political and cultural reach, one that stretched past his presidency and across the world. A grand narrative of Roosevelt''s crucial role in the twentieth century persists: the notion that American ideology, embodied by FDR, overcame the Depression and won World War II, while fascism, communism, and imperialism-and their ignoble figureheads-fought one another to death in Europe. This grand narrative is flawed and problematic, legitimizing the United States''s cultural, diplomatic, and military role in the world order, but it has meant that FDR continues to loom large in American culture.
In FDR in American Memory, Sara Polak analyzes Roosevelt''s construction as a cultural icon in American memory f
