Do You like book The Autobiography Of Eleanor Roosevelt (1992)?
I've always admired Eleanor Roosevelt and after finishing this book, I think I idolize her. Her legacy with the United Nations and her tireless work for human rights and dignity are as strong as her husband's legacy with the New Deal. She decried America's apathy toward democracy and worried that if we didn't foster and cultivate it, we couldn't protect it either. What a great president she would have made. She was committed to her role as public servant and worried that democracy had been overtaken in the 1960 election when the candidate was selected by the Convention and not the constituents, saying "yet boss rule can exist only where there is widespread indifference....and having committed to the machine, the delegate can only carry out instructions. He remains deaf to the voice of his constituents." She also decried political conventions because a party with "noise, bands and balloons, to the accompaniment of the manufactured and synthetic excitement of parades, is to strip one of the most important features of our system of its dignity and meaning." I highlighted heavily and could go on, but I won't.Her active role within the United Nations gave her a global perspective on politics and peoples worldwide and she wrote a daily newspaper column on these topics, beginning in 1935 until the early 1960s. Though she wrote her autobiography 50 years ago, her words are as timely today as they were then. This should be required reading for all Americans who need to turn off "reality TV" and live in the real world.
—Scampbell
This is a wonderful book, IMO. The first section focuses on her early years of childhood and marriage and the pre-White House years; the second on the White House years; the third part on her UN years; the fourth on her later-year thoughts. I have always admired ER, particularly when I was young; as a middle-age woman now - I still want to be ER when I grow up!Her early years are interesting, as she had to face a lot of criticism - e.g., from her mother about her appearance (ER calls herself an ugly duckling) - and disappointments. She was shy so found it difficult to interact with people even as her husband was climbing the ranks in the Democratic Party. But, she always rose to the occasion and did what she needed to do. During the White House years, her schedule was crazy. (view spoiler)[ I was most impressed that she went into the war zones (granted, not to the front, but still) in the Pacific in the middle of WWII! With no staff! She received criticism for the expense of taking people with her, so she went by herself or with a secretary on military planes. Mothers (readers of her DAILY column that ran from 1935-60) wrote asking her to check on their sons ... and she did ... and wrote personal letters back to the moms assuring them that their boys were ok.The UN years are really compelling as she seemed to be able to reach out to those with whom she disagreed in an attempt to garner some positive engagement or even compromise. (hide spoiler)]
—Susan from MD
This is a very careful, guarded autobiography, written towards the end of Eleanor's life. And it was an extraordinary life, indeed. It is a challenge for anyone to write a candid autobiography, of course; there are people in everyone's life who deserve privacy and forgiveness and respect despite their failings. But it makes for a sterile book. There is nothing salacious here; no insight at all in to the experience of being married to a serial womanizer, for example, or even acknowledgement that she was in fact married to one. The years after his polio are treated as a mild rough patch and largely glossed over. This makes the parts about her married life pretty tedious, and little more than an accounting of who came to dinner at the White House when, with a big chunk detailing her visit with the Queen of England. Even her political activities during this time are fairly opaque, and she often refers to incidents with the assumption that everyone will know what she is talking about, which might have been more true at the books publication fifty years ago. It is clear, however, that FDR was an absolute genius in so many ways, with insatiable curiosity, a prodigious memory, a gift for listening to various points of view, and an unsurpassed sense for political power. Eleanor was obviously gifted in her own right, but there is no question she gained much through the opportunity to closely observe and be tutored by him. The most interesting parts of the book to me were towards the end when she recounts her visits to the Soviet Union and shares her thoughts about the threats communism posed. It is fascinating to read someone's impressions, the visceral fear, at a point in time from the near-ish future, when you know at least how part of the story plays out. She explains that the people in communist countries are then not free, but they are fed, and that forty years previous they were not free but unfed. She implores the western world to not underestimate the power of the freedom to eat. It is also a bit sad to see her genuine hope in the UN to make things better, which seems to not have really worked out either, at least to the degree she imagined.
—Gina
