MY PARENTS: A Differing View

by James & Bill Libby Roosevelt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1976

The pity is that the Roosevelt offspring have so often been in financial straits, as eldest son James, nearing seventy, makes abundantly clear; else they might have withheld the sweepings of their illustrious parents' lives. Elliott, you may recall, blew the Lucy Mercer affair, and James contends he blew it up: after the onset of polio, says James, FDR was incapable of sexual intercourse. So much, too, for the alleged affair with secretary and intimate Missy LeHand. But James has his own headline-grabber: his mother, he conjectures, was more than ""an aunt"" to her handsome young bodyguard (""as Victorian as Mother may have been, she was a woman, too""). The recollections are rambling and repetitive, offering up some new anecdotes and taking issue with the accounts of his brother, Jim Bishop, and others (the so-called ""differing view""). The one consequential disclosure is James' claim that ""Father planned to use the bomb""--but why, one wonders, was this nugget withheld until now? He constantly regrets ""that we did not have the kind of family life that many others had,"" and as regularly, by his own admission, exploits the Roosevelt name. Tasteless and inept.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Playboy

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1976

Categories: NONFICTION