“This is history told the old-fashioned way. The book is only as long as it needs to be, the adroit narrative full of heroes (Smith, Roosevelt, big-city Democratic bosses) and villains (William Randolph Hearst, William Jennings Bryan, the Ku Klux Klan). The scenes are vivid and the anecdotes plentiful.” –The Wall Street Journal “Frank & Al is the latest of Mr. Golway’s several captivating … Mr. Golway’s several captivating books on New York politics. He delivers once again, with a timely narrative on the centennial of Smith’s first election as governor.” —The New York Times
“The tangled, tragic story of Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt is one of the great tales of American politics, and Terry Golway has told it beautifully. This is a joyous book… an especially important book now.” –Joe Klein
“I highly recommend this fascinating and enlightening book.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt, III
“Beautifully written…The book is must reading for anyone interested in the history of American politics and the rise of the country’s welfare state.” –Robert Dallek, author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963
“A marvelous portrait… Highly recommend!” –Douglas Brinkley, author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America
The inspiring story of an unlikely political partnership–between a to-the-manor-born Protestant and a Lower East Side Catholic–that transformed the Democratic Party and led to the New Deal
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Democratic Party was bitterly split between its urban machines–representing Catholics and Jews, ironworkers and seamstresses, from the tenements of the northeast and Midwest–and its populists and patricians, rooted in the soil and the Scriptures, enforcers of cultural, political, and religious norms. The chasm between the two factions seemed unbridgeable. But just before the Roaring Twenties, Al Smith, a proud son of the Tammany Hall political machine, and Franklin Roosevelt, a country squire, formed an unlikely alliance that transformed the Democratic Party. Smith and FDR dominated politics in the most-powerful state in the union for a quarter-century, and in 1932 they ran against each other for the Democratic presidential nomination, setting off one of the great feuds in American history.
The relationship between Smith and Roosevelt, portrayed in Terry Golway’s Frank and Al, is one of the most dramatic untold stories of early 20th Century American politics. It was Roosevelt who said once that everything he sought to do in the New Deal had been done in New York under Al Smith when he was governor in the 1920s. It was Smith who persuaded a reluctant Roosevelt to run for governor in 1928, setting the stage for FDR’s dramatic comeback after contracting polio in 1921. They took their party, and American politics, out of the 19th Century and created a place in civic life for the New America of the 20th Century.
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Terry Golway’s Frank and Al is a marvelous portrait of two combative Democratic leaders from New York―FDR and Al Smith―and the New America they forged on behalf of the forgotten men and women of the 1920s and 1930s, and beyond. Anybody interested in U.S. political history needs to read this essential history. Highly recommend!
Common goals bring people together; alliances are made between unlikely people. Friendships are forged, but sometimes the friends become alienated, their relationships shifting with the loss or gain of political power.
Reading biographies on President Franklin D. Roosevelt I learned about Al Smith, the New York City politician who failed to gain the presidential nomination because of his Catholic Faith. I knew that FDR’s 1928 presidential nomination speech for Al Smith marked FDR’s political comeback after polio. I was curious to learn more about Al and requested the galley for Frank & Al by Terry Golway.
Right away I fell under Al’s spell. He had charisma and personality and a commitment to helping the ‘little man’ with a progressive agenda. He knew the challenges they faced first-hand., for Al had to leave school and work in the Fulton Fish Market after the death of his father. His mother took a factory job. Tammany Hall promoted his political rise to Albany. Realizing how unprepared he was, Al committed to studying until he had a command of the issues and laws. He became a popular and beloved New York State governor.
No one could have been more different from Al than FDR with his long family history of status and wealth. FDR was a Harvard man. He was also seen as a lightweight, but he supported Al all the way.
How these two men changed the Democratic party is the core of the book. The history of their friendship recalls Adams and Jefferson–allies turned foes who embrace reconciliation later in life.
I was actually thrilled while reading the narratives about the conventions! Al’s Catholicism was a huge issue. The KKK came out in full force to wield its influence. The Democrats had to choose to condemn the KKK as an Anti-American terrorist group and risk splitting the party or water the platform down to condemning any secret society. The clan gathered in New Jersey to burn an effigy of Al Smith. Protestant preachers across Middle America turned Al into a Papal pawn and denounced his opposition to Prohibition.
Al was hugely popular in the East and among city folk but could not win rural WASP America. After Hoover’s failure to address the Depression, FDR was successful in his presidential bid…and the rest is history. Al, though, did not take his losses well and was critical of FDR’s policies.
The Democratic party was transfigured by Al’s agenda which was continued by FDR on the national level; the president admitted he was following the agenda set by Al many years ago in New York State. The two men had some form of reconciliation and worked together but the warm friendship was never regained!
It always strikes me when I read history how human nature does not change. Al and Frank, or John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, politics power disrupts friendships. Xenophobia rears its ugly head again and again. Where once the Catholics were feared as puppets of the Pope, now we fear Muslims. Every history I read is relevant to the issues we face today.
Golway has written a wonderful book that brings these men and the times to life in a thrilling narrative history.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Terry Golway’s book is a moving and beautifully written history that is also essential reading for anyone trying to understand the politics of Trump-era America. Through the fragile alliance of FDR and Al Smith, a patrician and an ethnic urban machine pol, we see the creation of the modern Democratic Party and its potential to enact transformational social and economic change. And through its ultimate unraveling, we see the resentments and class tensions that Democrats have struggled to manage ever since.
Terry Golway’s beautifully written book not only traces the careers of two of America’s most significant twentieth-century politicians but also reminds us of how the Democratic party became the powerhouse it was for so many years in mid century. The book is must reading for anyone interested in the history of American politics and the rise of the country’s welfare state.