About this item
During World War II the "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war in the West. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt's charm and Winston Churchill's victory signs - the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the leadership of the two nations. Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis E. 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 generals and the admirals, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt's and Churchill's agendas while also pursuing their own. Such was the conduct of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with FDR; generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; the Soviet spy in the leadership cadre of the US Treasury, Harry Dexter White, and his struggle with Lord Keynes; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill. The President and the Prime Minister had the difficult task, not always well-performed, of managing their subordinates. Churchill and Roosevelt frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves, and with Stalin. Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman's book reveals the personal diplomacy, the character and statecraft, at the core of the leadership of the Anglo-American alliance.
About the Author
LEWIS E. LEHRMAN has written widely about history, economic and monetary policy in publications such as Harper's, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, Crisis, New York Post, Greenwich Time, The American Spectator, The Washington Times, The Washington Examiner, National Review and The New York Times. His writings about monetary economics earned him an appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the Presidential Gold Commission in 1981. Along with Congressman Ron Paul, Lewis Lehrman collaborated on a minority report of the commission, which was published as The Case for Gold (1982) . He is also the author of The True Gold Standard: A Monetary Reform Plan without Official Reserve Currencies (2012) and Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point (2008) . He edited the 2012 edition of Money and the Coming World Order.
In April of 1987, Lehrman joined Morgan Stanley & Company, investment bankers, as a Senior Advisor and a Director of Morgan Stanley Asset Management. In 1988, he became a Managing Director of the firm. He is presently Senior Partner of L. E. Lehrman & Co., an investment firm he established.
Lehrman has been named to the advisory board of the American Principles Project's Gold Standard initiative. He heads The Gold Standard Now - a project of The Lehrman Institute. Established in 1972, The Lehrman Institute is a public policy foundation focused on history, economic and foreign policy, education, and local communities. He has been a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, the Morgan Library, the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation and New-York Historical Society. He is a former Chairman of the Committee on Humanities of the Yale University Council.
Lehrman received the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2005 for his teaching and studies of American history. In 2010, he was awarded the William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship.
Lehrman earned his B.A. from Yale where he became a Carnegie Teaching Fellow on the Yale faculty and an M.A. from Harvard where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Lehrman has been awarded honorary degrees from Babson College (Babson Park, MA) where he was made a member of its Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame; Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA) ; Lincoln College (Lincoln, IL) , Marymount University (Arlington, VA) ; and Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, CA) .
