The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II

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 ...