Franklin and Winston : an intimate portrait of an epic friendship /

Includes bibliographical references (pages 449-467) and index.

A fortunate friendship -- pt. 1. In God's good time: beginnings to late fall 1941. 1. Two lions roaring at the same time : A disappointing early encounter ; Their lives down the years ; The coming of World War II -- 2. Those bloody Yankees : Roosevelt's letter of September 11 ; Churchill's anguished pleas for help ; An elusive America ; Britain alone -- 3. Jesus Christ! What a man! A mission to London ; Churchill courts Hopkins ; "Sail on, o ship of state" -- 4. Lunching alone broke the ice. A secret meeting at sea ; Churchill and Roosevelt hit it off ; America enters the war -- pt. 2. Getting on famously: winter 1941 to late summer 1943. 5. A couple of emperors : A White House holiday ; Churchill's heart scare ; An embarrassing telephone call -- 6. I think of you often : Churchill faces a storm at home ; Family dramas ; Roosevelt comforts Churchill ; A Sunday morning in the Oval Study -- 7. You may kiss my hand : Eleanor Roosevelt calls on the Churchills ; Rendezvous at Casablanca ; A sunset at the pinnacle -- 8. I know he means to meet Stalin : A letter from Lucy Rutherfurd ; Roosevelt's secret overture to Moscow ; Fishing at Shangri-la ; A moonlit drive -- pt. 3. The chill of autumn: fall 1943 to the end. 9. I had to do something desperate : A makeshift Thanksgiving ; Tough times in Teheran ; Roosevelt turns on Churchill -- 10. The hour was now striking : Both men battle their mortality ; Tension and triumph on D-Day ; A fight over the next front -- 11. Life is not very easy : Churchill worries about Roosevelt's reelection ; Stalin and Churchill in Moscow ; Roosevelt's global vision ; "It's in the bag"-- 12. I saw WSC to say goodbye : The meeting at Yalta ; Roosevelt and Churchill part ; A "lovers' quarrel" ; The president goes to Warm Springs -- 13. You know how this will hit me : The last letters ; "I had a true affection for Franklin" ; Churchill in winter -- Them's my sentiments exactly -- Appendix: Their days and nights: a summary of the Roosevelt-Churchill meetings, 1941-1945.

"The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history's towering leaders. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of the Greatest Generation. In [this volume, the author] explores the ... relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one--a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children. Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR's affections which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides and Winston Churchill. Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history. [In the volume, he] has written [an] account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age."--Jacket.