9th Annual Roosevelt Reading Festival

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum will host its ninth annual Roosevelt Reading Festival on Saturday, June 23, 2012. The Reading Festival will be held in the Henry A. Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home. All Roosevelt Reading Festival activities are open to the public free of charge.

In six concurrent sessions taking place throughout the day, twelve authors of recently published works that draw upon the Roosevelt Library archives, or focus on the Roosevelt era, will present author talks followed by question-and-answer sessions and book signings. Copies of all of the authors’ books will be available for sale in the New Deal Store located in the Wallace Center. The program begins at 9:45 a.m. with coffee and doughnuts for attendees.

This year’s Roosevelt Reading Festival authors include:

Special Afternoon Presentation:
Persico, Joseph E.
Roosevelt’s Centurions: FDR and the Commanders He Led to Victory in World War II
Random House, 2012

Bodnar, John
The “Good War” in American Memory
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010

Davis, Ren and Helen
Our Mark on This Land: A Guide to the Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps in America’s Parks
McDonald & Woodward, 2011

de Kay, James Tertius
Roosevelt’s Navy: The Education of a Warrior President, 1882-1920
Pegasus, 2012

Hiltzik, Michael
The New Deal: A Modern History
Free Press, 2011

Huddle, Mark A., ed.
Roi Ottley’s World War II: The Lost Diary of an African American Journalist
University Press of Kansas, 2011

Knepper, Cathy
Jersey Justice: The Story of the Trenton Six
Rivergate Books, 2011

McLaughlin, John J.
General Albert C. Wedemeyer: America’s Unsung Strategist in World War II
Casemate, 2012

Robinson, Greg
After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics
University of California Press, 2012

Shirley, Craig
December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World
Thomas Nelson, 2011

Smith, Jean Edward
Eisenhower in War and Peace
Random House, 2012

Stuckey, Mary E.
Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity
University Press of Kansas, 2004

Reading Festival Agenda

One thought on “9th Annual Roosevelt Reading Festival

  1. Michael Hiltzik will undoubtedly use this opportunity to savage FDR and carry on about the internment of some of the West Coast Japanese- Americans during WWII. How do I know that? Because he has written a whole book about it.

    I hope someone will point out to Mr. Hiltzik the content of the MAGIC documents in which we learn that the Japanese government had been SUCCESSFUL in recruiting first- and second-generation Japanese — along the Pacific Coast — to keep track of troop, ship and war materiel movements, information which they would then convey to the Japanese military.

    The MAGIC documents were the decoded DIPLOMATIC (not military) cables between Japan and Japanese diplomats within the USA.

    Awareness that Japanese people along the West Coast were helping to document and send to Japan militarily useful information that would help the Japanese military do great harm along the West Coast was a genuine cause for concern. We now know of at least six Japanese submarines that came in close to the West Coast of America; the West Coast was considered a war zone, and with good reason.

    It took only one or maybe two Japanese spies in Hawaii to provide the Japanese military with all the information they needed to target and destroy our navy in Pearl Harbor with maximum efficiency. And let’s not forget the 2402 Americans who were killed and 1282 Americans who were wounded in that sneak attack — which had been made more successful because of the spying done by Japanese in Hawaii.

    The Japanese have been waging a very aggressive and well-funded campaign to make themselves appear to be the victims of WWII aggressiveness and making it seem that they were the poor souls of WWII.

    But, by the time any West Coast Japanese-Americans were interned, the Japanese military had been waging horribly cruel and extremely aggressive wars against many countries in Asia since 1931.

    Many good and decent Americans were displaced by the war that Japan started; Americans boys and men were forced from their homes, forced to leave good jobs, forced to leave their families, and were sent into war zones where many were maimed and/or killed. The West Coast Japanese-Americans interned during the war were not the only victims of Japanese aggression.

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