ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

Perhaps the problems attendant on writing a biography of a living person loomed so large that the biographer was stymied. Perhaps the awareness that opinion regarding Mrs. Roosevelt goes to such extremes of admiration or dislike, made an objective study seem colorless, though Eleanor Roosevelt is herself such a colorful personality that some of her vibrancy inevitably emerges. In spite of this, this biography does little more than skim the surface of bare facts; very little of the personality behind the activities is allowed to come through; the author somehow fails to make her live. With the second volume of her own autobiography shortly to appear, we feel that younger readers would do well to turn to that rather than this disappointing text.