...[a] gripping story masterfully told ... The great achievement of Lelyveld is in synthesizing vast amounts of primary and secondary material into wise passages that are equal parts narrative and description ... we know how FDR’s final months turned out — but now we have a heroic and poignant picture of how and why.
...a careful, somber and sometimes harrowing account of FDR’s last 16 months ... Mr. Lelyveld tells us little that other biographers have not discovered, but his full and disciplined investigation of an important theme makes a significant contribution to FDR scholarship.
Pinning down FDR’s innermost thoughts is always an elusive goal for a scholar, but Lelyveld has the fortitude and skill to properly analyze FDR’s decision-making process. What makes His Final Battle so exceptional is Lelyveld’s admirable ability to write nonfiction with highly stylized lyrical beauty ... There is, however, to my mind, a fundamental shortcoming to Lelyveld’s analysis of how FDR envisioned the postwar world...Lelyveld gives short shrift to the gigantic role his distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt played in FDR’s geopolitical thinking ... Somewhat mysteriously he pretends that Eleanor Roosevelt — who barely warrants a couple of cameo appearances in these pages — is irrelevant.
...a gripping, deeply human account of the last 16 months of Roosevelt’s life ... In reading Lelyveld’s moving, elegiac portrait of Roosevelt’s last months, one comes away with conflicting emotions about the man and his final mission.
...[a] splendid and richly detailed portrait of Franklin Roosevelt in the final months of his life ... President Roosevelt won reelection in November, was inaugurated in January, and died in April, three months into his fourth term. After that came the cold war and atomic weapons and a new diplomatic policy called 'mutual assured destruction.' Lelyveld shows with clarity and shrewd judgment how it came about.
Lelyveld won the Pulitzer Prize 30 years ago...His Final Battle will not repeat that feat, though it is a tale well-told ... The book carries an impending sense of doom. FDR’s last time in the White House, and his final visit to his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., are chronicled with a drama that they surely lacked at the time.
