The Brazen Age

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited New York City in 1944 during his fourth election tour, a raging storm failed to stop him from embarking on an ambitious fifty-mile automobile procession through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan. He saw little of what was then a dynamic metropolis on the rise. This would be, as David Reid reveals, the architecture, a thriving movie business, theater, radio, and the beginning of television, as well as publishing-books, magazines, and...
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When Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited New York City in 1944 during his fourth election tour, a raging storm failed to stop him from embarking on an ambitious fifty-mile automobile procession through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan. He saw little of what was then a dynamic metropolis on the rise. This would be, as David Reid reveals, the architecture, a thriving movie business, theater, radio, and the beginning of television, as well as publishing-books, magazines, and newspapers. Looming large is the frenzied, creative energy of Greenwich Village, with its literary refugees from Europe, radicals and intellectuals producing important works and publishing small journals. But the times would be determined by the next president, and Reid looks closely at Thomas Dewey, Henry Wallace, and Harry Truman, as well as James Forrestal, secretary of the navy under Roosevelt, who would become the secretary of defense under Truman. A vivid and colorful moment in history, full of rich and unexpected detail.