Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

September 19, 2016
In the third and concluding volume of this splendid biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, Cook doesn’t have to make a case for her subject. Roosevelt’s life and character do that well enough on their own. If there’s a theme to the volume, it’s the way Roosevelt moved out of her husband’s massive shadow during WWII to live an active, complex, and independent life well before F.D.R.’s death in 1945. All the while, she was part of “one of history’s most powerful and enduring partnerships”—a partnership of “mutual respect and shared commitments”—and she was often F.D.R.’s stand-in, though at other times she was silenced for political or security reasons. Always in Roosevelt’s corner, Cook skillfully weaves her subject’s active and emotional life among friends and family members into the depiction of her public role. The champion of human rights, the anti-Fascist, the foe of anti-Semites, the protector of the ill and infirm, the superb personal diplomat is everywhere in sight, as are Roosevelt’s sometimes-bitter disagreements with, and disappointments in, her husband. If there’s any criticism of this otherwise superb book, it’s that it simply peters out—at the end of these three fine volumes, readers look for and deserve a summation, a rounding-out, and Cook never provides one. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary.

Having already devoted more than 1,200 pages to the extraordinary life of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) in two previous installments, the skilled biographer offers the final volume.Although the third book focuses on the period from 1939 to 1945, Cook (History/John Jay Coll., Graduate Center, CUNY; Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2, The Defining Years, 1933-1938, 1999, etc.) also covers the remainder of Roosevelt's meaningful accomplishments and personal relationships until her death in 1962. No hagiographer, the author presents Roosevelt's strained personal relationships, occasional passive-aggressive behavior, moral equivocations due to electoral politics, and other less-than-admirable qualities. Overall, though, Cook shows Roosevelt as empathetic to the less fortunate in both America and overseas, relentlessly optimistic about eventually achieving world peace, courageous in the face of personal danger, and almost superhumanly energetic until her final year. What may resonate most for contemporary readers is Roosevelt's crusade for greater racial harmony. She did not merely offer lip service to racial equality; she modeled it in her friendships and in the issues she promoted to Congress and her husband, despite widespread discrimination against blacks that showed no signs of abating. Cook notes that while outlining the current volume, she chose to develop the metatheme of the first lady obsessing about "race and rescue." Because most of the narrative unfolds during World War II, Cook amply examines Eleanor's efforts to influence the decisions of her husband. The president and Eleanor had to negotiate a rocky personal relationship due to his philandering and her unusual romantic liaisons, but as partners in politics, the mutual respect between them never wavered. The final pages about Eleanor's postwar activities seem overly telescoped, but that's a minor quibble in this outstanding work of biography. Cook makes a strong case that her subject is the most influential first lady in American history and even the most influential woman in world affairs since at least 1900. A winning concluding volume in a series that does for Eleanor Roosevelt what Robert Caro has done for Lyndon Johnson. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2016
Published in 1992 and 1999, respectively, Volumes 1 and 2 of this monumental biography both received front-page coverage in the "New York Times Book Review" and went on to become "New York Times" best sellers. Here, Cook ranges from World War II to the death of Eleanor Roosevelt in 1962, showing how her closely held ideals increasingly bumped up against the realities of the war effort and of postwar politics.

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Starred review from October 15, 2016
Cook published the first volume in her Eleanor Roosevelt biography series in 1992. Volume 2, which covered the years 193338, appeared in 1999. As the years went by, readers of the previous excellent books might have been concerned that a third volume about the last 20-plus years of Roosevelt's life might not be forthcoming. Happily, it is here and worth the wait. There is a lot to cover in this period, the war years and beyond, and at times it does feel a bit like Cook is ticking off historical high points. But, as in the previous volumes, there is much more tucked in each chapter. Cook, obviously, knows her subject intimately and is able to make connections that come after a lifetime of study. The focus is on the war years, but even during that imperiled time Roosevelt never lost sightand neither does her biographerof the other issues that consumed her: social and economic equality as a liberal vision and hope. Readers also continue to learn more about Roosevelt's inner life, her relationship to her husband, and, fascinatingly, the way she would find love and comfort in the friendship of men, like her eventual biographer Joseph Lash and the financier Bernard Baruch. The last chapter of Mrs. Roosevelt's life, after the death of her husband, a period when she was more fully able to work from a place of her own beliefs rather than working around FDR's political necessities, is also chronicled fully and perceptively. All this makes for fascinating reading, and it highlights for students of history how the world has changed since ER's time. And how it has not.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)