From Publishers Weekly
This highly readable, well-researched work of feminist scholarship erases the image of the young Eleanor Roosevelt as a long-suffering, repressed wife and presents her as a strong, ever-evolving individual. Photos. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Continuing a major biography.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Packed with intriguing facts and detail, this volume focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt's life before her husband's election to the presidency. Cook's voice is level, her pronunciation sometimes odd and her pace a bit irregular. However, her passion for her topic is infectious. She reads the text as though delivering it from a podium and succeeds in getting the listener to lean forward in anticipation. An unusual aspect of this abridgment is that Cook informs the reader about what material is being skipped over. The abridgment retains the logic of the longer text but gives it a stream-of-consciousness flow, making the chapter breaks irrelevant. E.S.B. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
From Cook (History/John Jay; The Declassified Eisenhower, 1981, etc.)--the first volume of a massive biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, which, in seeking redress for its subject, is flawed by its own (feminist) biases. Long overshadowed by the achievements of FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt's own extraordinary life deserves wider attention. The poor little rich girl who was born into one of New York's wealthiest and most distinguished families was unkindly called ``Granny'' by her beautiful but cold mother; lost both her parents before she was 12; was taken in by relatives who made her always feel an outsider; and, once married, had to contend with a tyrannical mother-in-law and a philandering husband. And yet, Cook tells us, there were triumphs and periods of fulfillment-- schooldays in London; ventures into politics and civic activities; and the golden interlude of the 1920's, when ER led her own life independent of FDR, becoming a sought-after speaker, activist, and commentator. Cook conscientiously records the achievements and the many unhappinesses--not just the discovery of FDR's affair with Lucy Rutherford--as well as the consolation of friends, mostly women (though Cook believes that ER had an affair with Earl Miller, one of the Roosevelts' security guards). The volume ends with FDR's election to the presidency, an achievement about which, for FDR's sake, ER was ``sincerely glad''--but which also led her to comment, ``Now I shall start to work out my own salvation.'' In less-than-luminous prose, ER gets her uncritical due while FDR becomes the typical male villain--duplicitous, weak, and owing everything to a good woman. Informative but not definitive. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


From Book News, Inc.
The first volume of a projected two-volume biography. Historian (CUNY) and journalist Cook draws upon previously untapped sources--including recently opened archives, FBI and State Department documents, and letters of long-obscured friends--to restore a goodly dose of human passion to the iconic humanitarian. Volume one spans the years from Eleanor's birth to her husband Franklin Delano's inauguration. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Rebecca Sullivan
Eleanor Roosevelt is an extensively researched, revisionist text which sings praises of one of this century's most revered and least understood women. Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884 into a prominent American family, but her childhood was often bitter. Her parents could not offer her the love and security she needed, and they died when she was very young. Raised by maternal relatives, she studied for a time in England, then fell in love with her cousin, Franklin Roosevelt. She seemed destined to be a socialite wife of a wealthy politician, and that is how her life has most often been interpreted. But Blanche Cook chronicles Eleanor Roosevelt's real life: her political agenda - often refreshingly at odds with the powerful political arena surrounding her husband - and her lifelong efforts on behalf of women, children, and workers. Equally compelling is the author's compassionate and revealing study of this remarkable woman's personal life. Although her abiding respect and love for her husband and children is central to her life, it is Eleanor Roosevelt's passionate friendships with the independent and sometimes radical women intellectuals of her time, and in particular, her intense relationship with Lorena Hickock, which underscore her deep commitment and struggle to create a separate and fulfilling life for herself. We are left in awe of this woman, this freethinking iconoclast who bucks tradition, and of Blanche Cook's inspired telling of Eleanor Roosevelt's first fifty years. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

ANNOTATION

Cook hit a nerve with her portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt--the brave, fierce, passionate, political heroine of our century. A national bestseller, her authoritative biography has been celebrated by feminists, historians, politicians, potential first ladies, and by reviewers everywhere. Now this seminal work depicting the life and achievements of an inspiring First Lady is available in trade paperback. Photographs.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Part Two Of Two Parts

Eleanor Roosevelt is arguably the most important woman in American political history. She polarized people during her life, and as this biography proves, continues to do so to this day.

Cook rescues Roosevelt from her role as long-suffering matron. In her place stands a woman fully realized--evolving, self-directed. Her life celebrated social justice combined with enduring emotional relationships.

"A great story told with verve and charm." (The New York Times)

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine

Now that Elizabeth Dole is running for President and Hillary Clinton might run for the Senate, it is fitting that the second volume of Blanche Wiesen Cook's biography of Eleanor Roosevelt should appear. In examining and celebrating her subject's life, Cook never strays far from the topic of women in politics.

Cook devoted her first volume of Eleanor Roosevelt's life to the time before FDR was elected President. As has been well documented, ER (as Cook refers to her) grew up in a family plagued by privilege and power and witnessed abuse and alcoholism throughout her childhood. Cook examines how these experiences shaped ER into a woman who not only fought desperately for her own autonomy but who also relished in the struggle. Despite ER's record as a fierce advocate for liberalism and feminist causes, and despite the hints and rumors that she pursued at least two romantic affairs while married to FDR, there remains on her portrait a patina of demure martyrdom to the demands of a public life and to an unfaithful husband. In her own memoirs, ER maintains a self-effacing tone and refuses to elaborate about her own beliefs and ambitions.

In this volume, which covers the years from 1933-1938, Cook reveals not only how ER took control of her own destiny and identity, but also the destiny of the country. Before she came to the White House, ER had developed a clear political vision, shaped in part by her many friendships with politically minded women such as Elizabeth Read, an attorney, and Narcissa Cox, the chair of the New York State League of Women Voters. ER came to eschew the small aristocratic circle in which she had grown up in favor of political activism.Her work as a member of the League of Women Voters and the Women's City Club drew her into the progressive struggle, helping to shape her views as a social feminist.

While in her first volume, Cook focused on the development of ER's character and her views, in the second she analyzes how she pursued her political agenda. Before FDR's election, ER served primarily as a social reform advocate. But, once she took up residence in the White House, she tacitly assumed the role of policy adviser, not simply receding into the background like the First Ladies who preceded her. Instead, she took advantage of the inherent limitations of her position—because she didn't hold a formal title and was not directly responsible to the constituency, she could speak honestly about issues such as women's rights and racial justice. In effect, she ran an administration parallel to FDR's. And although much of her policy-making and political maneuvering necessarily took place behind the scenes, it nonetheless helped both to bring into being and to shape the New Deal era.

Though their intimate relationship had become increasingly passionless, ER and her husband worked together to bring about social reform. As FDR spent the first hundred days of his term working on legislation that would become the basis for the New Deal, ER drew on a tight network of social feminists to secure an improved life for women. Realizing that her only hope of achieving her goals was to broaden her audience, she changed her regular column of personal reflections in Woman's Home Companion into a "correspondence with the American people,' which served as a conduit between the public and the President. It was popular democracy in its purest sense and it was the technique ER used often to pursue her goals, from the "crusade to end lynching' to ending fascism abroad.

This second volume deals exclusively with the White House years, offering less of the glamour and tumult of ER's early life covered in the first volume. Romantic intrigue is less prominent in the narrative as Cook devotes herself to careful analysis of the genesis and development of ER's social and political consciousness. But what always remains clear is how ER acted on her personal convictions and turned them into political action. —Charles Davis

Publishers Weekly