Eleanor Roosevelt loved to teach history and she must have been really good at it. As a historian with a specialty in U.S. women’s history, I love exploring the life and impact of Eleanor Roosevelt. It's a rewarding way to experience the early decades of the 20th century, to gain familiarity with the culture, issues, and politics of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and, while so doing, to meet up with an astonishingly talented group of writers and scholars who have made their own inquiries into Eleanor Roosevelt’s life and works. Studies of ER now constitute a thriving subfield in scholarship and publishing; it's a privilege to be part of it.
Historian Allida M. Black tracks Eleanor Roosevelt’s vast outpouring of political commentary from the 1930s onward by tapping the most vital sources. These range from entries in “My Day,” Mrs. Roosevelt’s inimitable syndicated newspaper column, to selections from letters, speeches, books, and essays. From the New Deal to the Cold War era, the writings reveal ER’s allegiance to democracy and internationalism, to civil rights and human rights. A rich collation for students and admirers, the book caters as well to general readers who seek connection with ER.
Dozens of books have been written about Eleanor Roosevelt, but her own writings are largely confined to the Roosevelt archives in Hyde Park. Courage in a Dangerous World allows her own voice again to be heard. Noted Eleanor Roosevelt scholar Allida M. Black has gathered more than two hundred columns, articles, essays, and speeches culled from archives whose pages number in the millions, tracing her development from timorous columnist to one of liberalism's most outspoken leaders. From "My Day" newspaper columns about Marian Anderson and excerpts from Moral Basis of Democracy and This Troubled World to speeches and articles on…
Matthew Stokoe has been translated and published around the world, his books have set new boundaries in urban horror and gritty, pull-no-punches noir. After Cows, Stokoe turned his sights on Hollywood, producing the now-famous High Life – both a page-turning mystery and one of the most brutal critiques of Tinsel Town ever committed to fiction. Stokoe has continued to explore his uniquely dark view of lives lived in the modern world, and in 2014 was nominated for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière – France’s most prestigious crime writing award – for his novel, Empty Mile. Colony of Whores, is his latest novel.
Algren has been called a proletarian writer. Working primarily in Chicago from the 1930s to the 1950s, he was intensely concerned with the plight of the common man. His milieux were the gambling dens, the sawdust bars, the decaying hooker-prowled streets, the beat-down police stations, the shooting galleries, the slums, the cheap walk-up flats where broken men and women fought each other in desperate battles to survive one more miserable day. His characters were the poor, the ignorant, the addicted, tramps, bums, card sharps, petty crims, accidental murderers... But in all of them he found something human, something that might have been good, might have been worthy of a decent life – if only it had been given half a chance.
The Man with the Golden Arm tells the story of Frankie Machine, the golden arm dealer at a back street Chicago gambling den. Frankie reckons he's a tough guy in the Chicago underworld but finds that he's not tough enough to kick his heroin addiction. With consummate skill and a finely-tuned ear for the authentic dialogue of the backstreets, Algren lays bare the tragedy and humour of Frankie's world.
Features the first UK publication of a foreword by Kurt Vonnegut and an afterword by Studs Terkel.
I'm a cultural historian (degrees in English and American Studies). I taught at the university level for 25 years (Emerson College, principally) and worked 20+ years as an acquisitions editor, in book publishing, at Harvard, at Cambridge University Press, and for a small company I founded, Berkshire House. I was politically sympathetic to Mrs. Roosevelt’s POV before the “My Day” book project came to me, but, coincidentally, her long run as a syndicated columnist interested me also because my first job, fresh out of college, was as a cub reporter for Associated Press. I learned, in a hurry, how to deliver a story on deadline, with all the facts double checked.
We take Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Minimum Wage for granted; we also take for granted the presence of women in cabinet positions and as heads of regulatory agencies (especially since the Obama and Biden administrations). But in the 1930s, when The Depression began (and lasted for nearly a decade), none of this was present or common. A whole raft of ideas we call “The New Deal” and ascribe, rightly, to FDR’s astute leadership had, in fact, a moving force behind them, and that force was Frances Perkins, a workers’ rights advocate who served as US Secretary of Labor, 1933-1945. The first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. Thus, a strong parallel to Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady. And, therefore, a good book for broader context on the life and work of Mrs. Roosevelt.
“Kirstin Downey’s lively, substantive and—dare I say—inspiring new biography of Perkins . . . not only illuminates Perkins’ career but also deepens the known contradictions of Roosevelt’s character.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air
One of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s closest friends and the first female secretary of labor, Perkins capitalized on the president’s political savvy and popularity to enact most of the Depression-era programs that are today considered essential parts of the country’s social safety network.
I’m a picture-book author who wrote about Mahalia Jackson so more people would feel the sense of awe about her that I do. When I first read how she was treated by our own country, I was furious. But her amazing grace allowed me to focus on the positive aspects of her life, like she did.
This heart-warming picture book celebrates the real-life friendship of two great women, reminding us that greatness doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And their adventure, while unprecedented in history, feels very relatable since it’s essentially a sleepover. At the White House! (With the bonus of the freedom of flying and driving.) The illustrations, while reflecting the time in history, also feel timeless.
An extraordinary picture book from Newbery Honoree Pam Muñoz Ryan and Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick about two heroines, national treasures, and close friends, Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt!
Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt were birds of a feather. Not only were they two of the most admired and respected women of all time, they were also good friends. Illuminated here for the first time in picture book form is the true story of a thrilling night when they made history together!On a brisk and cloudless evening in April 1933, Amelia and Eleanor did the unprecedented: They stole away from a…
I’m a picture-book author who wrote about Mahalia Jackson so more people would feel the sense of awe about her that I do. When I first read how she was treated by our own country, I was furious. But her amazing grace allowed me to focus on the positive aspects of her life, like she did.
This delightful picture book opens with Eleanor Roosevelt’s firm footing in the White House. Then it transports us back to her childhood, where we see the foundation for that footing: Eleanor cultivating her own character, way before she met her husband. The wonderful backmatter asks children how they might make their own mark, to enhance their lives…and the world.
I have been intrigued by Eleanor Roosevelt since I was a little girl in Sedalia, Missouri, and my mother read me Eleanor's "My Day" columns in the Kansas City Star. Mother would look up and say, "I'm sure she is better than he is," referring, of course, to Eleanor being better than Franklin. My family was rock-ribbed Republican and disapproved of Franklin's policies. I wondered then—and still do—why my mother and other women of her era had so much reverence for Eleanor. I have been looking for the answer ever since.
Endeavors to tell in one volume the story of an American icon, integrating her personal and public lives. This work offers an introduction to her many public roles—as a journalist, First Lady from 1933-1945, delegate to the United Nations (1945-1952), political leader, media personality—as well as her multifaceted personal life.
The New York Times bestseller from prizewinning author David Michaelis presents a “stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) breakthrough portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt, America’s longest-serving First Lady, an avatar of democracy whose ever-expanding agency as diplomat, activist, and humanitarian made her one of the world’s most widely admired and influential women.
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin…
Following my PhD at King’s College, Cambridge I was invited by the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London to serve as an Honorary Research Fellow. This enabled me to focus fully on 15 years of research into previously untapped archives and interviews with more than twenty-five politicians and jurists active in the process of the African human rights charter. By coincidence, thirty-five years or so ago, in an earlier incarnation, I was also responsible for editing the first public debt prospectus for the African Development Bank in Abidjan.
The author’s perspective on human rights and the process would not be something I would endorse, but it is, nonetheless, to date, the best book on the details of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it wound its way through the United Nations.
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1999
Born of a shared revulsion against the horrors of the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has become the single most important statement of international ethics. It was inspired by and reflects the full scope of President Franklin Roosevelt's famous four freedoms: "the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear." Written by a UN commission led by Eleanor Roosevelt and adopted in 1948, the Declaration has become the moral backbone of more than two hundred human rights…
I'm a cultural historian (degrees in English and American Studies). I taught at the university level for 25 years (Emerson College, principally) and worked 20+ years as an acquisitions editor, in book publishing, at Harvard, at Cambridge University Press, and for a small company I founded, Berkshire House. I was politically sympathetic to Mrs. Roosevelt’s POV before the “My Day” book project came to me, but, coincidentally, her long run as a syndicated columnist interested me also because my first job, fresh out of college, was as a cub reporter for Associated Press. I learned, in a hurry, how to deliver a story on deadline, with all the facts double checked.
There are several biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, but few match this 3-vol. effort for its comprehensiveness and its sensitivity to the inner life of Eleanor (who led an exceedingly public life). All of Mrs. Roosevelt’s accomplishments are covered—with excellent context—and the bonus here is coverage of her private struggles as a shy, “orphaned” child, then as a beloved wife (to a disloyal husband), her failures as a mother, and her apparently quasi-lesbian attraction to another woman, as well as an unusual attachment to her doctor. Not a simple story!
One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2016 One of NPR's 10 Best Books of 2016
"Heartachingly relevant...the Eleanor Roosevelt who inhabits these meticulously crafted pages transcends both first-lady history and the marriage around which Roosevelt scholarship has traditionally pivoted." -- The Wall Street Journal
The final volume in the definitive biography of America's greatest first lady.
"Monumental and inspirational...Cook skillfully narrates the epic history of the war years... [a] grand biography." -- The New York Times Book Review
Historians, politicians, critics, and readers everywhere have praised Blanche Wiesen Cook's biography of Eleanor Roosevelt as the essential…
I have been intrigued by Eleanor Roosevelt since I was a little girl in Sedalia, Missouri, and my mother read me Eleanor's "My Day" columns in the Kansas City Star. Mother would look up and say, "I'm sure she is better than he is," referring, of course, to Eleanor being better than Franklin. My family was rock-ribbed Republican and disapproved of Franklin's policies. I wondered then—and still do—why my mother and other women of her era had so much reverence for Eleanor. I have been looking for the answer ever since.
ER's many accomplishments perhaps overshadow the importance of her as a political force after the death of Franklin. I like this book because it spells out what an important role she played in the Truman administration, in particular, and during the Eisenhower years in keeping alive the beacon of liberalism in the Democratic Party.
Black shows how Eleanor Roosevelt, after being freed from the constraints imposed by her role in the White House, eagerly expanded her career and unabashedly challenged both the Democratic party and American liberals to practice what they preach.
I have been intrigued by Eleanor Roosevelt since I was a little girl in Sedalia, Missouri, and my mother read me Eleanor's "My Day" columns in the Kansas City Star. Mother would look up and say, "I'm sure she is better than he is," referring, of course, to Eleanor being better than Franklin. My family was rock-ribbed Republican and disapproved of Franklin's policies. I wondered then—and still do—why my mother and other women of her era had so much reverence for Eleanor. I have been looking for the answer ever since.
This depicts the intimacy between Eleanor and Lorena Hickok, a reporter for the Associated Press, that existed at the time Eleanor first moved into the White House in spite of vast differences between the social backgrounds of the two women. Describes Hickok's influence on Eleanor's contacts with other women reporters as well as Hickok's undercover reports on poverty-stricken areas for the Roosevelt administration that prompted Eleanor to personally undertake relief efforts in West Virginia.
A warm, intimate account of the love between Eleanor Roosevelt and reporter Lorena Hickok-a relationship that, over more than three decades, transformed both women's lives and empowered them to play significant roles in one of the most tumultuous periods in American history
In 1932, as her husband assumed the presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the First Lady with dread. By that time, she had put her deep disappointment in her marriage behind her and developed an independent life-now threatened by the public role she would be forced to play. A lifeline came to her in the…
