FDR in American Memory: Roosevelt and the Making of an Icon

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 ...