SOURCE: "FDR as a Biographer's Problem," in The American Scholar, Vol. 52, Winter, 1983/84, pp. 100-08.

In the following essay, Davis presents a profile of Roosevelt's character.

When, more years ago than I like to count, a publisher approached me with the proposal that I do a book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, only the accompanying offer of what was for those days a quite large advance against royalties was tempting to me. It was a temptation I resisted. The flood of Rooseveltiana already in print, including several established classics, was overwhelming; I saw no need to add to it. The risks and difficulties of the proposed project were formidable. There was the danger, for instance, of becoming bogged down in interminable research (it crushed my spirit to learn that there were forty-five tons of documents in the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park). Finally, conclusively, as I thought at the time...