Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) was the thirty-second president of the United States. During his four terms in office he led the United States through the Great Depression and most of the Second World War. Born in Hyde Park, New York, Roosevelt instituted sweeping social, economic, and political changes under the New Deal to help pull the country out of the Depression. He remains the only president to serve more than two terms, and has been cemented in history as one of the country’s greatest statesmen and activists.
Dagobert D. Runes was born in Zastavna, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary (now in Ukraine), and received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1924. In 1926 he emigrated to the United States, where he became editor of the
Modern Thinker and later
Current Digest. From 1931 to 1934 he was director of the Institute for Advanced Education in New York City, and in 1941 he founded the Philosophical Library, a spiritual organization and publishing house.
Runes published an English translation of Karl Marx’s
On the Jewish Question under the title
A World Without Jews, featuring an introduction that was clearly antagonistic to extreme Marxism and “its materialism,” yet he did not entirely negate Marxist theory. He also edited several works presenting the ideas and history of philosophy to a general audience, including his
Dictionary of Philosophy.
