With Hard Bargain, Robert Shogan, the distinguished author of Riddle of Power and None of the Above, offers the definitive account of one of World War II's most dramatic chapters - the inside story of how Franklin D. Roosevelt secretly brokered a deal to provide the destroyers Churchill needed to save Britain from destruction, irrevocably altering the postwar world order.

Not fully understood until now, this episode transformed the role of the American presidency and paved Roosevelt's way to a third term.

At the center of the momentous events of 1940 are these two extraordinary leaders, whom Shogan brings to vibrant life: Churchill, the forthright pragmatist, and Roosevelt, the suave politician. As Hitler's war machine threatened to starve England into submission, these two men initiated a complex negotiation that would shatter all precedents for conducting foreign policy. FDR yearned to enter the war and defeat Hitler, but he was handcuffed by domestic politics, including his need to win a third term.

Churchill had to plead for American intervention at a time when the United States was intensely isolationist. Drawing on archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Shogan masterfully re-creates the President's maneuvers as FDR stepped around the Constitution in order to cinch the deal, a move that has had repercussions from Korea to Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.

1. Told with novelistic flair, Hard Bargain is a riveting contribution to history and a penetrating analysis of the abuses of presidential power.