Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Constitution Center.

I am Jeffrey Rosen, the president of this wonderful institution.

As one or two of you who have been here before may know, the National Constitution Center is the only institution in America

chartered by Congress to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan

basis.

And as those of you have been here before also know,

I have the great privilege of moderating book discussions

with the world's greatest authors here every week.

But I hope all of the people who have been here before

will not take offense when I confess the truth, which is that Jeffrey Ward is my favorite

historian.

Thank you, sir. historian. I have read and reread his three great books about Franklin Roosevelt,

before the trumpet about Roosevelt's youth,

a first-class temperament, which takes us up

from his callow early adulthood until he becomes

president, and closest companion, his completely riveting account of the close friendship, let's call it, between the president and Daisy

Sukley, and we'll talk about the ways in which the recent movie on the matter

distorted the relationship in the crudest in most absurd ways

imaginable. So I'm here as a fan and I've really been just counting the days

until Jeffrey Ward came so that I can ask him about all my favorite anecdotes and share with you his brilliant

insights into FDR's emotional makeup of this extraordinary complex and man who is also perhaps our greatest president,

as well as the emotional complexity that created the characters of Theodore and Eleanor,

...