Roosevelt and Churchill is the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill—a friendship that saved the world. “Being with them was like sitting between two lions roaring at the same time.” —[Churchill's daughter] Mary Soames As the world faced the deadliest conflict in human history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, thirty-second president of the United States, and Winston Churchill, wartime prime minister of the United Kingdom, recognized each other as vital allies. Under the menacing threat of world domination by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in Europe and the military power of Japan in Asia, Roosevelt and Churchill’s urgent need for each other’s support soon turned into a firm friendship. Thrown together during World War II, their relationship was rarely straightforward. They disagreed politically, but maintained the greatest affection and respect for each other. They would often sit up late into the night drinking and smoking together. Their correspondence comprised nearly two thousand letters and cables. Together they steered the world through the dark days between 1939 and 1945 and emerged victorious. Both men were fallible, both making political and strategic mistakes—sometimes at the cost of thousands of lives. However, without the bond between them, the war against Nazism, Fascism, and Japan’s imperial ambitions would have been lost. Roosevelt and Churchill tells the tale of a friendship with consequences like no other, that helped create world peace.

Best-selling author Winston Groom tells the complex story of how Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin--the three iconic and vastly different Allied leaders--aligned to win World War II and created a new world order. By the end of World War II, 59 nations were arrayed against the axis powers, but three great Allied leaders--Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin--had emerged to control the war in Europe and the Pacific. Vastly different in upbringing and political beliefs, they were not always in agreement--or even on good terms. But, often led by Churchill's enduring spirit, in the end these three men changed the course of history. Using the remarkable letters between the three world leaders, enriching narrative details of their personal lives, and riveting tales of battles won and lost, best-selling historian Winston Groom returns to share one of the biggest stories of the 20th century: The interwoven and remarkable tale, and a fascinating study of leadership styles, of three world leaders who fought the largest war in history.

During World War II the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt’s grins and Winston Churchill’s victory signs, the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the two nations. Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis Lehrman explains how the Anglo-American alliance worked--and occasionally did not work--by presenting portraits and case studies of the men who worked the back channels and back rooms, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s agendas while also pursuing their own and thwarting others’. This was the domain of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with his boss; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill, who had the difficult task, not always well performed, of managing their subordinates and who frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves. Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman’s book reveals the personal diplomacy at the core of the Anglo-American alliance.