Churchill and Roosevelt, Volume 1

Book excerpt: Volume one of the complete wartime correspondence of the two great statesmen of the twentieth century This three-volume work is the first complete collection of the correspondence of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These volumes bring together every written communication that passed between Churchill and Roosevelt during their years of wartime leadership, providing rare perspective on the politics and strategy of the Second World War as conducted by two of history’s most charismatic men. Few other world leaders have communicated so regularly and on such an informal and often personal level. The topics covered in their correspondence range from the fate of nations and the shape of the postwar world to the mixing of martinis, details of fishing trips, and the swapping of doggerel verse. A major scholarly contribution, Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence draws on exhaustive research in American and British archives and include telegrams, letters, memos, and scrawled notes as well as transcripts made of Churchill and Roosevelt’s telephone conversations and a number of message drafts and unsent cables that offer unique insights into the thinking of the two leaders. Warren Kimball provides invaluable commentaries throughout, giving the context of specific documents and providing a chronology of the period. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.