Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America

by Douglas Brinkley

Overview

Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior celebrated Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision to protect 234 million acres of wild America. Now, in Rightful Heritage, Brinkley turns his attention to another indefatigable environmental leader—Teddy’s distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt—chronicling his essential yet undersung legacy as the founder of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and premier protector of America’s public lands. FDR built from scratch dozens of state park systems and scenic roadways. Pristine landscapes such as the Great Smokies, the Everglades, Joshua Tree, the Olympics, Big Bend, the Channel Islands, Mammoth Cave, and the slickrock wilderness of Utah were forever saved by his leadership.

Brinkley traces FDR’s love for the natural world back to his youth spent exploring the Hudson River Valley and bird-watching. As America’s president from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt, a consummate political strategist, established hundreds of federal migratory bird refuges and spearheaded the modern endangered species movement. He brilliantly positioned his conservation goals as economic policy to fight the severe unemployment of the Great Depression. During its nine-year existence, the CCC put nearly three million young men to work on conservation projects—including building trails in the national parks, pollution control, land restoration to combat the Dust Bowl, and planting more than two billion trees.

Within the narrative are brilliant capsule biographies of such environmental warriors as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Rosalie Edge. Rightful Heritage is essential reading for everyone seeking to preserve our treasured landscapes as an American birthright.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062089250
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Pages:	784
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, presidential historian for the New-York Historical Society, trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. The Chicago Tribune dubbed him “America’s New Past Master.” He is the recipient of such distinguished environmental leadership prizes as the Frances K. Hutchison Medal (Garden Club of America), the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks (National Parks Conservation Association), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Lifetime Heritage Award. His book The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He was awarded a Grammy for Presidential Suite and is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates in American studies. His two-volume, annotated Nixon Tapes won the Arthur S. Link–Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The Education of a Hudson River Conservationist, 1882-1932

Chapter 1 "All That is in Me Goes Back to the Hudson" 3

Chapter 3 "I Just Wish I Could be at Home to Help Mark the Trees" 27

Chapter 4 "He Knew Every Tree, Every Rock, and Every Stream" 47

Chapter 5 "Wise Use" 65

Chapter 5 "Nothing Like Mother Nature" 92

Chapter 6 "A Twice-Born Man" 122

Part 2 New Deal Conservation, 1933-1936

Chapter 7 "They've Made the Good Earth Better" 159

Chapter 8 "He Did Not Wait to Ask Questions, But Simply Said that it Should Be Done" 187

Chapter 9 "Roosevelt Is My Shepherd" 213

Chapter 10 "The Year of the National Park" 238

Chapter 11 "A Duck for Every Puddle" 268

Chapter 12 "Sooner Or Later, You are Likely to Meet the Sign of the Flying Goose" 298

Chapter 13 "We Are Going to Conserve Soil, Conserve Water, and Conserve Life" 330

Part 3 Conservation Expansion, 1937-1939

Chapter 14 "While You're Gittin', Git A-Plenty" 361

Chapter 15 "I Hope the Son-of-a-Bitch Who Logged that is Roasting in Hell" 389

Chapter 16 "Perpetuated For Posterity" 420

Chapter 17 "To Benefit Wildlife" 455

Part 4 World War II and Global Conservation, 1940-1945

Chapter 18 "An Abundance of Wild Things" 485

Chapter 19 "The Army Must Find a Different Nesting Place!" 513

Chapter 30 "Conservation is a Basis of Permanent Peace" 549

Prologue: "Where the Sundial Stands" 577

Appendix A National Park System Areas Affected Under the Reorganization of August 10, 1933 596

Appendix B National Wildlife Refuges Established Under Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945 600

Appendix C National Parks and National Monuments Created by Franklin D. Roosevelt Following the Reorganization of August 10, 1933 610

Appendix D Establishment and Modification of National Forest Boundaries by Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 1933 to April 1945 611

Appendix E The Nine Civilian Conservation Corps Areas 624

Appendix F Civilian Conservation Corps-Basic Facts 625

Acknowledgments 627

Notes 638

Index 718

Editorial Reviews

…[an] enjoyably exhaustive new biography…Roosevelt thought deeply about the environment, more so than perhaps any other president save his distant relative and namesake, Theodore Roosevelt—as Brinkley well knows, having published a similarly extensive biography of Teddy Roosevelt as an environmentalist, The Wilderness Warrior, in 2009. The Roosevelt cousins make for a satisfying historical diptych. Both came from wealth, and as children were exposed to the best that the American outdoors had to offer. Relatively early in their careers, they came to believe that capitalism had been allowed to run roughshod over much of America's natural beauty, and that it was the government's duty to set things right.

The New York Times Book Review - Clay Risen

“Rightful Heritage is a marvelous book in every sense; one of Douglas Brinkley’s very best. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s achievements in conservation helped preserve the nation’s natural bounty, but also made it accessible to the citizenry as never before. An easily forgotten legacy of the New Deal, those achievements presaged bold efforts at global conservation during World War II. By telling this grand story so well, Brinkley provokes readers to appreciate how, with great leadership and sufficient political will, the national government can perform wonders of its own.” - Sean Wilentz
“Rightful Heritage is an irresistibly powerful and beautiful tale of America’s fraught love affair with its land, told by one of our most gifted historians. From the white pines of the Adirondacks to the black volcanoes of Hawaii, Brinkley follows FDR on an astonishing journey that, despite war, depression, and political infighting, somehow preserved what is most precious to us.” - Candice Millard
“Until you read the book it’s difficult to comprehend just how skillfully, and with what narrative brio, Brinkley manages to tell this story of one man’s single-minded odyssey…What a president! What a book!” - Nickolas Butler, internationally bestselling author of Shotgun Lovesongs and The Hearts of Men
A marvelous book; one of Brinkley’s very best. FDR’s conservation achievements helped preserve the nation’s natural bounty and made it accessible to citizens as never before. By telling this grand story so well, Brinkley provokes readers to appreciate how the national government can perform wonders of its own. - Sean Wilentz
Following his definitive look at Teddy Roosevelt’s passion for wilderness conservation, Brinkley now brings us a colorful, exciting narrative of how his cousin FDR carried on the cause. Brinkley gives us a wonderful, timely new perspective on FDR; his wife, Eleanor; and the dedicated environmentalists around them. - Walter Isaacson
With this engaging book, Brinkley recovers one of FDR’s long-overlooked legacies: stewardship of America’s natural resources. This is a vivid history of an important subject. We are lucky that Brinkley has turned his attention to the Roosevelt we do not generally associate with the preservation of our environment. - Jon Meacham
Stunningly researched and compellingly written, Rightful Heritage tells the story of FDR’s love affair with the American wilderness. In our search for compassionate and clear-headed leaders to guide us through the environmental crisis, Brinkley’s vividly detailed account of Roosevelt’s pioneering preservationism serves as a much-needed beacon and bible. - Megan Marshall
Rightful Heritage is an irresistibly powerful and beautiful tale of America’s fraught love affair with its land, told by one of our most gifted historians. Brinkley follows FDR on an astonishing journey that, despite war, depression, and political infighting, somehow preserved what is most precious to us. - Candice Millard
Douglas Brinkley is America’s most distinguished student of our nation’s environmental history. Rightful Heritage is a landmark achievement. The fullest and most compelling study of FDR’s extraordinary role in perpetuating our natural treasures, it is a must read for anyone interested in the environment - Robert Dallek
“High-spirited and admirably thorough.” - Washington Post
“Enjoyably exhaustive.” - New York Times Book Review
“[Douglas] Brinkley is one of the nation’s most acclaimed and popular historians [and] Rightful Heritage is a big book about a pivotal time in American history. Brinkley writes admiringly of Roosevelt’s record, but his tone is backed up by a rich trove of research.” - USA Today (four stars)

From the Publisher