Eleanor roosevelt biography reviews
Eleanor
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
While me reading this book in what GR dubbs „Women‘s History Month“ is purely coincidental, I do like reading about historically important people and think that women have been overlooked quite a lot until relatively recently. This biography, I‘m happy to say, does the powerhouse that is Eleanor Roosevelt justice.
I‘ve decided not to repeat the important dates in Eleanor‘s life here. It doesn‘t really matter to me when she did what. Instead, it is important, that she did what she did. Especially considering how she started out.
Because Eleanor was bullied by her very own mother and other relatives to the extreme. She was ignored or mocked, her self-confidence not taken away but never allowed to emerge at all. It had a severe impact on her later life as she not only needed at least one person‘s constant reassurance but also meant she couldn‘t really connect with her husband. To be sure, that was not just her fault as FDR wasn‘t exactly a devoted husband either. Nevertheless, Eleanor might have reacted to certain events differently, stood up more to her mother-in-law for example.
Instead, Eleanor was often just decoration, ordered around, talked down to, ignored (again) and left to suffer various slights, not least of which were her husbands affairs.
She still stood by her husband though she eventually learned to set terms.
Then FDR became President and while I sincerely doubt I would have ever been able to like the man, I do like many of his policies - which OBVIOUSLY were HEAVILY influenced by his wife. In fact, he probably would have never been able to win the election without Eleanor‘s help.
She was a diligent worker, always passionate and never tiring. Eventually, she even learned to do what she didn‘t necessarily wanted to if it was important (she learned that from President Wilson‘s wife), like taking care of wounded soldiers. It even became her motto (see above).
She taught he
Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery
Author Freedman neatly balances history and entertainment, descriptive and snappy prose, and fact and ambience. He knows how to engage young readers without sacrificing content or literary style. Freedman does enough research to write a scholarly adult work, but carefully chooses material that will hold a young adult's attention. Eleanor Roosevelt was a complex woman who faced as many emotional challenges as political ones, and Freedman offers readers a well-rounded view of Roosevelt that is not shaded in hero worship. Boys may not be able to identify as easily as girls do with Roosevelt's struggles as a plain-looking girl, a young wife and mother dependent on her husband and his family, and an intelligent woman wanting to break through confining social traditions -- but both girls and boys will come away understanding Roosevelt's strengths (compassion, energy, open-mindedness) and her self-professed weaknesses (emotional intensity, a somber attitude, and no-nonsense mothering).
Despite a few points of history that could use more explanation -- the October 1929 stock market crash, for example -- Freedman presents a lively view of a vivid chapter in U.S. history. This biography is as much an interesting leisure-time book as it is a classroom history text. Source notes for the many quotes are missing, but Freedman does include a discussion of further reading and of historical sites connected to Roosevelt.
Eleanor
Fueled by 11 years of research, the new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt by David Michaelis, New York Times bestselling author of N. C. Wyeth, is both compelling and comprehensive, making use of previously untapped archival sources and interviews. It seems no accident that Michaelis chooses as his leading epithet this quote from the nation’s most formidable and longest serving first lady: “I felt obliged to notice everything.” In the same way, her biographer, who actually met Roosevelt when he was just 4 years old, trains his careful attention on virtually all aspects of her incredible life and times to craft a fast-moving, engrossing narrative.
Eleanor follows its subject from birth to her death in 1962. Michaelis sets the stage by providing a list of principal characters, then presents Roosevelt’s life in seven parts designed to reflect the myriad roles she played in her transformation from an awkward child into a force of nature. Roosevelt’s life journey took her from a shy, often ignored child, whose mother shamed her with the nickname “Granny,” to a dynamic first lady and then a “world maker” when, as one of the country’s first delegates to the United Nations, she spearheaded the adoption of the first Universal Declaration of Human Rights in history.
Of course, Eleanor Roosevelt’s life was entwined with that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Eleanor was so intrinsically linked with the New Deal and World War II, it’s sometimes easy to forget that she was born in 1884 and was almost 36 years old when the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. That was one year before the summer when FDR contracted polio, altering both their lives in profound ways.
Michaelis never neglects the politics and history that marked the life of this remarkable, fascinating woman. At the same time, his impeccable storytelling and seamless integration of dialogue and quotations allow him to create an intimate, lively and emotional portrait that unfolds like a good novel. The b
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt
Early life
Roosevelt as a small child, 1887
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884 at 56 West 37th Street in Manhattan, New York City, to socialites Anna Rebecca Hall and Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt from an early age she preferred to be called by her middle name, Eleanor. Through her father, she was a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. Through her mother, she was a niece of tennis champions Valentine Gill "Vallie" Hall III and Edward Ludlow Hall. Her mother nicknamed her "Granny" because she acted in such a serious manner as a child. Anna was also somewhat ashamed of her daughter's plainness.
Roosevelt had two younger brothers: Elliott Jr. and Hall. She also had a half brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, through her father's affair with Katy Mann, a servant employed by the famiy Roosevelt was born into a world of immense wealth and privilege, as her family was part of New York high society called the "swells".
Her mother died from diphtheria on December 7, 1892, and Elliott Jr. died of the same disease the following Major Her father, an alcoholic confined to a sanitarium, died on August 14, 1894 after jumping from a window during a fit of delirium tremens. He survived the fall but died from a seizure. Roosevelt's childhood losses left her prone to depression throughout her life. Her brother Hall later suffered from alcoholism. Before her father died, he implored her to act as a mother towards Hall, and it was a request she made good upon for the rest of Hall's life. Roosevelt doted on Hall, and when he enrolled at Groton School in 1907, she accompanied him as a chaperone. While he was attending Groton, she wrote him almost daily, but always felt a touch of guilt that Hall had not had a fuller childhood. She took pleasure in Hall's brilliant performance at school, and was pr