This was a very well written biography, I’ve read several biographies of both Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, this one tied all of those together for me. It’s impossible to separate these two giants of American history. It was not an easy book to read, however. It was so hard to read about the horrific racism and sexism during her lifetime. It was mind boggling to me that during the “alphabet soup” years of the early 1930’s there was serious consideration of excluding African Americans from benefitting from those programs. The forced relocation of several hundred thousand Japanese Americans for no valid reason shortly after Pearl Harbor had such a detrimental effect on each of those individuals.
Eleanor had a very clear moral center and she persuaded her husband to change his mind on different policies, but I kept thinking about what she could have accomplished had she not been hindered by her gender.
She was a flawed and psychologically wounded person. Her childhood, while financially privileged, had much tragedy. Her early experiences kept her from being open with others. The book does describe her various love interests.