Exuberant Praise for Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 1: The Early Years, 1884-1933

“This book is exhilarating. With a marvelous combination of brilliant original research and deep intuition and empathy, Blanche Wiesen Cook conveys a wondrously human Eleanor Roosevelt who transcended the rigidities of her exclusive social background to re-create herself with growing boldness. Cook evokes with compelling detail the zest of Eleanor’s political passions and the complexity of her personal passions. Eleanor Roosevelt will be read through the ages by all seeking the role model of an authentic heroine.”

—Betty Friedan

“An intelligent and absorbing study of this extraordinary life, which also examines the climate in which women’s mental and political lives were shaped—or stunted—in the early twentieth century.”

—Rhoda Koening, New York magazine

“This book gives us not only a fascinating, clear-eyed look at a pioneering leader of the past but a friend who can lead us into the future.”

—Gloria Steinem

“I’ve been waiting all my life for this book. At last we have a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt that frees her from all the rumors, stereotypes, prejudices, and distortions to reveal the truths that no one before Blanche Wiesen Cook seemed able to find, let alone to tell.”

—Carolyn Heilbrun

“In showing ER as a strong, confident, independent woman, [Cook] is bucking not merely sexist caricatures but also the reflexive self-deprecation of ER’s own autobiographical writings…. The facts are on Cook’s side.”

—David Gates, Newsweek

“Every woman in politics or interested in public life will want to read this book. Blanche Wiesen Cook’s Eleanor Roosevelt is bold and searching, a woman of struggle, action, and achievement. Every issue, every battle and controversy she faced—both public and private—continues today.”

—Bella Abzug

“The first volume of Blanche Wiesen Cook’s biography arrives not a moment too soon. Her research is rich…. [It] gives the extraordinary First Lady flesh.”

—Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

“Impassioned and sensitive, tender and angry …A fresh interpretation of the relationship between Roosevelt’s private and public selves …Spirited and absorbing.”

—David M. Kennedy, front page, The New York Times Book Review

“American political history at its best, Blanche Wiesen Cook’s Eleanor Roosevelt fractures comfortable stereotypes, presenting a radically new Eleanor—an independent political actor, nationally renowned years before she was a president’s wife; a desired and desiring woman.”

—Carrol Smith-Rosenberg

“Quite simply the best biography I’ve read in years. It offers the luxurious venues of high society, the anatomy of a celebrated marriage, history without pain, and, best of all, the character of Eleanor, arguably the most important woman in our political past.”

—Erica Abeel, New Woman

“This book should completely change historical interpretations of the life and times of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

—Mary Frances Berry

“Historian Cook bring[s] Eleanor entirely alive, with tender insight and a novelist’s skill. Had history always been written with such intelligence, charm, and understanding, we’d know a lot more about the past.”

—Louise Berkinow, Cosmopolitan

“This highly readable, well-researched work of feminist scholarship …presents Eleanor Roosevelt as a strong, ever-evolving individual who overcame an emotionally impoverished childhood to become a champion of social justice…. Outstanding.”

—Publishers Weekly

“All students of Eleanor Roosevelt and her place in history will benefit from the careful and thoughtful treatment that Cook provides …of the most important American woman of this century.”

—Lewis L. Gould, New York Newsday

“A provocative, engrossing biography that contributes significantly to our knowledge of this remarkable woman.”

—Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor

“A detailed, knowledgeable account of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

—The New Yorker

“The career of Eleanor Roosevelt reminds us that common decency was once the ruling principle for a very special life in politics. The special virtue of Blanche Wiesen Cook’s vivid biography is that it brings that life to life in such engaging and human terms.”

—James Mellow

AN AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTABLE BOOK