Louis Johnson and the Arming of America

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David L. Roll (along with co-author Keith D. McFarland) has written the definitive biography of Roosevelt's architect of industrial mobilization that put the nation on a war footing before its entry into World War II. Later, as Truman's second secretary of defense, Louis Johnson was (the authors say) "driven by politics, power and personal ambition, but rarely by principle." There are important parallels between the battles Johnson waged with others in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and those in the current Bush administration between Donald Rumsfeld and the Colin Powell internationalists. Roll, who was educated at Amherst College and received his J.D. from the University of Michigan, is an antitrust litigator with Steptoe & Johnson.