He was 39, at the height of his powers, when he was stricken with polio and became a paraplegic. He had been an athlete, a man who had loved to swim and sail, to play tennis and golf, to run in the woods and ride horseback in the fields. Determined to overcome his disability, he devoted seven years of his life to grueling physical therapy. In 1928, however, when he accepted the Democratic nomination for Governor of New York, he understood that victory would bring an end to his daily therapy, that he would never walk under his own power again. For the remainder of his life — through four years as Governor of New York and 12 years as President — the mere act of standing up with his heavy metal braces locked in place would be an ordeal. Yet the paralysis that crippled his body expanded his mind and his sensibilities. After what his wife Eleanor called his trial by fire, he seemed less arrogant, less superficial, more focused, more complex, more interesting. "There had been a plowing up of his nature," Labor Secretary Frances Perkins observed. "The man emerged completely warmhearted, with new humility of spirit and a firmer understanding of philosophical concepts." He had always taken great pleasure in people. But now, far more intensely than before, he reached out to know them, to pick up their emotions, to put himself in their shoes. No longer belonging to his old world in the same way, he came to empathize with the poor and the underprivileged, with people to whom fate had dealt a difficult hand.

No other President had so thoroughly occupied the imagination of the American people. Using the new medium of the radio, he spoke directly to them, using simple words and everyday analogies, in a series of "fireside chats," designed not only to shape, educate and move public opinion forward but also to inspire people to act, making them participants in a shared drama. People felt he was talking to them personally, not to millions of others.

After his first address on the banking crisis, in which he explained to families why it was safer to return their money to the banks rather than keep it hidden at home, large deposits began flowing back into the banking system. When he asked everyone to spread a map before them in preparation for a fireside chat on the war in the Pacific, map stores sold more maps in a span of days than they had in an entire year. When he announced a rubber shortage that Americans could help fill, millions of householders, delighted at the call for service, reached into their homes and yards to recover old rubber tires still hanging from trees as swings for their kids, as well as old garden hoses, rubber shoes and even rubber girdles.

Roosevelt purposely limited his fireside talks to an average of two or three a year, in contrast to the modern presidential practice of weekly radio addresses. Timed at dramatic moments, they commanded gigantic audiences, larger than any other program on the radio, including the biggest prizefights and the most popular comedy shows. The novelist Saul Bellow recalls walking down the street on a hot summer night in Chicago while Roosevelt was speaking. Through lit windows, families could be seen sitting at their kitchen table or gathered in the parlor listening to the radio. Under the elm trees, "drivers had pulled over, parking bumper to bumper, and turned on their radios to hear Roosevelt. They had rolled down the windows and opened the car doors. Everywhere the same voice. You could follow without missing a single word as you strolled by."

The press conference became another critical tool in reaching the hearts and minds of the American people. At his very first conference, he announced he was suspending the wooden practice of requiring written questions submitted in advance. He promised to meet reporters twice a week and by and large kept his promise, holding nearly 1,000 press conferences in the course of his presidency. Talking in a relaxed style with reporters, he explained legislation, announced appointments and established friendly contact, calling them by their first name, teasing them about their hangovers, exuding warmth. Roosevelt's accessibility to the working reporters helped explain the paradox that though 80% to 85% of the newspaper publishers regularly opposed his policies, his coverage was generally full and fair.

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