In The Sailor, David F. Schmitz presents a comprehensive reassessment of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's foreign policymaking.

Schmitz illuminates how the policies FDR pursued in response to the crises of the 1930s transformed Americans' thinking about their place in the world. He shows how the president developed an interlocking set of ideas that prompted a debate between isolationism and preparedness, guided the United States into World War II, and mobilized support for the war while establishing a sense of responsibility for the postwar world. The critical moment came in the period between Roosevelt's reelection in 1940 and the Pearl Harbor attack, when he set out his view of the US as the arsenal of democracy, proclaimed his war goals centered on protection of the four freedoms, secured passage of the Lend-Lease Act, and announced the principles of the Atlantic Charter.

Schmitz's work offers an important correction to existing studies and establishes FDR as arguably the most significant and successful foreign policymaker in the nation's history.

The book is published by The University Press of Kentucky. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks. Read by AudioFile Magazine Earphones Award Winning Narrator Peter Lerman.

"This is a story that needs to be retold, and the author is particularly well-equipped to tell it." (Steven Casey, author of The War Beat, Europe)

"With his considerable analytical talents, intellectual depth, and decades of scholarship, David Schmitz brings clarity to our understanding of the illusive FDR." (Thomas W. Zeiler, University of Colorado Boulder)

"Highly readable...scholars will find much here that is new and thought-provoking." (Marc Gallicchio, Villanova University)