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EMPTY WITHOUT YOU

Name: EMPTY WITHOUT YOU
Author: Rodger Streitmatter
ISBN: 0-684-84928-3

THE INTIMATE LETTERS OF ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AND LORENA HICKOK

by Rodger Streitmatter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 1998

No graphic descriptions of sexual play, but the cumulative power of these ardent letters makes it hard to believe that...

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At last, a firsthand look at the emotionally charged correspondence between Eleanor Roosevelt and “first friend” Lorena Hickok, believed by many to be the First Lady’s lover.

Streitmatter (Journalism/American Univ.; Mightier Than the Sword, 1997) has collected and annotated more than 300 of the perhaps more than 3,500 letters exchanged by Roosevelt and Hickok between 1933 and 1962, when ER, as she signed herself, died. The letters document that the relationship was not only “intense and intimate, but also passionate and physical,” notes the editor. Hickok destroyed many letters, explaining that the First Lady “wasn’t always so very discreet in her letters to me.” Hickok (a.k.a. Hick) was a talented and successful reporter for the Associated Press, assigned to cover Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign for president. As she also began writing stories about Eleanor, the two grew close. When the First Lady moved into the White House, she began writing Hickok daily, and sometimes twice a day, often beginning “Hick darling” and concluding with words of longing: “I would give a good deal to put my arms around you and to feel yours around me.” Hick’s responses were less effusive, but still affectionate. She also advised the First Lady on how to put her stamp on the White House role, suggesting press conferences and the “My Day” column, and urging her to make the famous coal mine visit. As public and family demands on Eleanor accelerated, her relationship with Hick became more distant. But she remained loyal in Hick’s difficult later years, offering her financial and emotional support.

No graphic descriptions of sexual play, but the cumulative power of these ardent letters makes it hard to believe that Eleanor and Hick’s relationship was “entirely asexual,” as one of the Roosevelt granddaughters insists.

Pub Date: Oct. 9, 1998

ISBN: 0-684-84928-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
OUTLAW MARRIAGES
by Rodger Streitmatter

- BOOK REVIEW
MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
by Rodger Streitmatter

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)