A focused account of a complex marriage that continues to fascinate.
A distinguished biographer’s fresh take on the marriage of the Roosevelts, the most dynamic couple ever to occupy the White House.
Scholars agree that Eleanor Roosevelt transformed the role of First Lady every bit as much as Franklin transformed the presidency. They divide, however, on the “touchy subject” of their unconventional marriage. Most see it as deeply troubled and champion one or the other partner. Rowley (Tête-à-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, 2005, etc.) declines to take sides, instead portraying the union as a courageous and radical arrangement that fulfilled the needs of each, a partnership as unprecedented as the manner in which they both served the country. By 1925, married 20 years with five surviving children, the Roosevelts were already a nontraditional union, for two reasons: Franklin’s World War I affair with Eleanor’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer, and his midlife affliction with infantile paralysis. From that point, notwithstanding a continuing deep respect and affection between them, they led largely independent lives, satisfying emotional needs through a series of romantic friendships that expanded the marriage into a kind of community involving colleagues, friends, employees and family. The people, with the exception of Louis Howe, FDR’s longtime political advisor, rarely overlapped. Eleanor’s circle included her bodyguard, a young socialist and her late-life personal doctor. She also cultivated close female companions, two Democratic Party activists with whom she lived for a time and a journalist. Rowley explores each of these relationships, acknowledges Eleanor’s life on “the edge of the lesbian world,” but admirably refrains from declarations for which she has no evidence. Franklin’s intimates included a distant cousin, flirtations with a woman publisher and most importantly, his personal secretary, “Missy” LeHand. Intending not to idealize the marriage, the author nevertheless touches too lightly on the Roosevelts’ powerful and devouring neediness. Their thoroughly undistinguished children were not least among the broken hearts and confused minds these two titans left behind.
A focused account of a complex marriage that continues to fascinate.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-15857-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
