Frank and Al, Terry Golway
Frank and Al, Terry Golway
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Frank and Al
FDR, Al Smith, and the Unlikely Alliance That Created the Modern Democratic Party

Author: Terry Golway

Narrator: Danny Campbell

Unabridged: 11 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/11/2018

Synopsis

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Democratic Party was bitterly split between its urban machines—representing Catholics and Jews, ironworkers and seamstresses, from the tenements of the northeast and Midwest—and its populists and patricians, rooted in the soil and the Scriptures, enforcers of cultural, political, and religious norms. The chasm between the two factions seemed unbridgeable. But just before the Roaring Twenties, Al Smith, a proud son of the Tammany Hall political machine, and Franklin Roosevelt, a country squire, formed an unlikely alliance that transformed the Democratic Party. Smith and FDR dominated politics in the most-powerful state in the union for a quarter-century, and in 1932 they ran against each other for the Democratic presidential nomination, setting off one of the great feuds in American history.

The relationship between Smith and Roosevelt, portrayed in Terry Golway's Frank and Al, is one of the most dramatic untold stories of early twentieth-century American politics.

About Terry Golway

Terry Golway was a senior editor at Politico and the author of several works of history, including Frank and Al and Machine Made. He has been a columnist and city editor at the New York Observer, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, and a columnist for the Irish Echo. He holds a PhD in United States history from Rutgers University and has taught at the New School, New York University, and the College of Staten Island.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jenny

From the turn of the century to world War II, American political life was dominated by Alfred E. Smith and Franklin Roosevelt. Their lives intertwined the conflict and cooperation in events that changed the Democratic Party, U.S. politics, and American social and economic news. Terry Golway has plent......more

Goodreads review by Chris

“Frank and Al” is an interesting book about two New York State governors, Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served back to back terms as governor and as Presidential candidates. The two could not have been more opposite. Al Smith came from very humble beginnings on New York City’s lower east......more

Goodreads review by Joe

Although entertaining at times, this is a scattershot, superficial, anecdotal history of these two historical figures and their decades long and evolving relationship. If you are familiar with either of these two men and this time period - nothing really new here.......more

Goodreads review by Nancy

Common goals bring people together; alliances are made between unlikely people. Friendships are forged, but sometimes the friends become alienated, their relationships shifting with the loss or gain of political power. Reading biographies on President Franklin D. Roosevelt I learned about Al Smith,......more

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