Frank and Al: FDR, Al Smith, and the Unlikely Alliance That Created the Modern Democratic Party

Historian Golway (history, Kean Univ.; Machine Made) presents a fuller story of the sometimes supportive, at other times antagonistic, relationship at the state and national levels between politicians Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt. Relying largely on correspondence found at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, supplemented by other archival and secondary sources, Golway traces how these two New York governors and presidential candidates shaped the Democratic party, both when they collaborated throughout the 1920s and when they split after 1932. This focused work offers cross-cutting accounts of the progress of these men—one a grade school drop out but practiced amateur actor, the other a privileged Harvard grad. With Roosevelt the subject of numerous books, the influence of the lesser-studied Smith is arguably more compelling and enlightening. Most of Smith's advisors eventually rallied for Roosevelt, while a few, notably Belle Moskowitz and Robert Moses, emphatically did not. Curiously, the author maintains that Eleanor Roosevelt campaigned for presidential candidate Smith in 1928, not her husband, that year's gubernatorial candidate.