Can Roosevelt be good for two whole weeks? Trying to be good leads to more trouble than expected!

With a new sister on the way, Roosevelt Banks has to give up his bedroom and move into the attic, which must be haunted because of all the squeaks and groans coming from the spooky place at the top of the stairs. After his plan to move into a fort in the woods fails, and a ghost-busting exercise goes terribly wrong, Roosevelt—with the help of Tommy, Josh, and Eddie Spaghetti—has to find the courage to defeat the biggest, spookiest ghouls ever and turn the Attic of Doom into a Room with a View.

“I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States.” Thus began not only the first of Franklin Roosevelt’s celebrated radio addresses, collectively called Fireside Chats, but also the birth of the media era of the rhetorical presidency. Humorist Will Rogers later said that the president took “such a dry subject as banking and made everyone understand it, even the bankers.” Roosevelt also took a giant step toward restoring confidence in the nation’s banks and, eventually, in its economy. Amos Kiewe tells the story of the First Fireside Chat, the context in which it was constructed, the events leading to the radio address, and the impact it had on the American people and the nation’s economy. Roosevelt told America, “The success of our whole national program depends, of course, on the cooperation of the public—on its intelligent support and its use of a reliable system.” Kiewe succinctly demonstrates how the rhetoric of the soon-to-be-famous First Fireside Chat laid the groundwork for that support and the recovery of American capitalism.

A New York Times–bestselling historian’s in-depth portrait of life in America, from the Depression era to the early 1970s: “Magnificent” (The New York Times). Award-winning historian and biographer William Manchester, author of The Last Lion, an epic three-volume biography of Winston Churchill, brings us an evocative exploration of the American way of life from 1932 to 1972. Covering almost every facet of American culture during a very diverse and tumultuous period in history, Manchester’s account is both dramatic and surprisingly intimate—with compelling details that could only be known by a dedicated historian who lived through and documented this fascinating time. It’s an enlightening, affecting, and highly entertaining journey through four extraordinary decades in the life of America. “There is no fiction that can compete with good, gossipy, anecdotal history—the inside story of who said or did what in moments of great tensions or crisis . . . I think you ought to read this history and weep, read it and laugh, read it and don’t repeat it.” —Anatole Broyard