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Title: Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook ISBN: 0-14-009460-1 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.35 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "...assertive, independent, and bold."
Comment: Eleanor Roosevelt's passions impress those who recall her later public image as a dowdy grandmother-type. No cracks about prominent teeth, please. Author Blanche Wiesen Cook does a commendable job of telling a familiar story from a fresh perspective. This book details ER's life from childhood to the beginning of her career as First Lady. The theme of the book is ER as "assertive, independent, and bold." As long as she lived by other people's expectations, ER was stifled. After she asserted her independence, she was happier and more successful. "She feared rigidities," Cook asserts. She abhorred the judgmental absolutes that she thought contributed to her parents' problems and early deaths. ER aspired to walk in the humanist footsteps of her mentor and great teacher, Marie Souvestre. Intriguing questions of ER's private life remain unanswered because she destroyed many of her personal letters and papers. Her marriage to Franklin Roosevelt was mercurial, and the boundaries grew undefined. After 1918, a crisis year in their marriage, ER formed a number of associations with women social activists. She embarked in new directions, and tirelessly supported women's issues. Ironically, she opposed the 1920s version of the equal rights amendment because she felt it would remove protections that women enjoyed under the laws of that time. Woven through the tapestry of the narrative are questions of ER's love life. Her close working friendships with lesbian activists, at minimum, suggest Sapphic possibilities. ER's views of love and sex were nonconformist, and included men and women. Both Earl Miller and Lorena Hickock played special roles in her life. Cook writes of Eleanor Roosevelt as a three-dimensional woman of joy and sorrow. This book is an eye opening and enjoyable read. Highly recommended. ;-)
Rating: 3
Summary: Frustrating and disappointing bio of a great heroine
Comment: If you want to understand Eleanor Roosevelt and her times, read Doris Kearns Goodwin's "No Ordinary Time: Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt -- The Home Front During World War II." Her historical perspective is broader, her prose ten times better, and her psychological analysis less one-sided and narrow.
This book is good if you want to know every last little detail about Eleanor's life -- it seems that Cook included every fact that could possibly be documented (and many with questionable or absent documentation - pages of assertions without endnotes to back them up!) Her prose is disorganized and often reads as if she went from one index card to the next without regard for transitions. (In one section she refers to the high regard on of FDR's bosses had for him, and in the very next sentence she says that it was Eleanor who bridged the tension between the two men. What tension was that? We don't find out for many more pages.) I agree with many reviewers that her feminist slant colors her interpretation unduly -- and I'm a strong feminist myself. What a shame - Eleanor deserved better.
Rating: 3
Summary: great life, ordinary biography
Comment: ER was certainly an impressive American. However this biography is too light for such a heavy weight. Wiesen Cook provides little analysis of the world between 1884 and 1933, just the occassional reference, yet the reason ER was so impressive was that she interpreted correctly and reacted positively to what was going on around her and her times. While the biographer provides so many extracts from her letters the reader feels like they are guiltity rummaging through another's most private possessions, she does not link these adequately to the times. Also, she is so enamoured with her subject that she frustratingly stops short of making a point or even stating her opinion or point of view on any interesting subject. Flowery prose is no substitute for pointed analysis, espeically in relation to a 20th century giant like ER.
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Title: Eleanor Roosevelt : Volume 2 , The Defining Years, 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook ISBN: 0140178945 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 05 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt by Eleanor Roosevelt ISBN: 030680476X Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: You Learn by Living by Eleanor Roosevelt ISBN: 0664244947 Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press Pub. Date: September, 1983 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok by Rodger Streitmatter, Eleanor Roosevelt ISBN: 0306809982 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 20 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin ISBN: 0684804484 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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