I have started reading Nigel Hamilton's trilogy on FDR as Commander in Chief during the Second World War.

The first book in the trilogy is FDR at War 1941-1942, "The Mantle of Command."

I must say that it is a pleasure to read. In the Prolog, Hamilton, a naturalized American of British origins, remarks - and I think this is a valid observation based on my experience - that while many authors have written on the military sense of Abraham Lincoln as "Commander in Chief," very few of Roosevelt's biographers do the same.

It is, thus far, a magnificent read, showing how FDR managed the war with great brilliance and intelligence, putting people like Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur in their place without them understand that they were being charmed into compliance unless a heavy hand was demanded, which it sometimes was. FDR used both Churchill and MacArthur not because they were wise military leaders - they were not - but as tools of the nebulous "spirit" of the war.

As a British born writer, I am very much impressed with his convincing realistic assessment of Churchill, the Imperialist and fabulist, who did, for all his faults, have his "finest hour" at the beginning of the war.

I am now at the part where Colonel Eisenhower - who had served with MacArthur as his subordinate and who despised him - began his rise to become the great political general he would become.

I have just read the part where Roosevelt bucks up President Quezon of the Philippines to convince him not to negotiate a surrender to the Japanese.

It is insightful writing. I love history books that cause one to "think anew." This is one of them.