Synopses & Reviews
Available again in time for election season, Eleanor Roosevelt's most important book—a battle cry for civil rights
As relevant and influential now as it was when first published in 1963, Tomorrow Is Now is Eleanor Roosevelt's manifesto and her final effort to move America toward the community she hoped it would become. In bold, blunt prose, one of the greatest First Ladies of American history traces her country's struggle to embrace democracy and presents her declaration against fear, timidity, complacency, and national arrogance. An open, unrestrained look into her mind and heart as well as a clarion call to action, Tomorrow Is Now is the work Eleanor Roosevelt willed herself to stay alive to finish writing. For this edition, former U.S. President Bill Clinton contributes a new foreword and Roosevelt historian Allida Black provides an authoritative introduction focusing on Eleanor Roosevelt’s diplomatic career.
Synopsis
A vivid and intimate portrait of the New Deal president by the first woman ever appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. When Frances Perkins first met Franklin D. Roosevelt at a dance in 1910, she was a young social worker and he was an attractive young man making a modest debut in state politics. Over the next thirty-five years, she watched his career unfold, becoming both a close family friend and a trusted political associate whose tenure as secretary of labor spanned his entire administration. FDR and his presidential policies continue to be widely discussed in the classroom and in the media, and The Roosevelt I Knew offers a unique window onto the man whose courage and pioneering reforms still resonate in the lives of Americans today.
Synopsis
Eleanor Roosevelt was born into the privileges and prejudices of American aristocracy and into a family ravaged by alcoholism. She overcame debilitating roots: in her public life, fighting against racism and injustice and advancing the rights of women; and in her private life, forming lasting intimate friendships with some of the great men and women of her times.
This landmark biography provides a compelling new evaluation of one of the most inspiring women in American political history. Celebrated by feminists, historians, politicians, and reviewers everywhere, it presents an unprecedented portrait of a brave, fierce, passionate political lerader of our century.
Synopsis
Historians, politicians, feminists, critics, and reviewers everywhere have praised Blanche Wiesen Cook's monumental Eleanor Roosevelt as the definitive portrait of this towering female figure of the twentieth century. Now in her long-awaited, majestic second volume, Cook takes readers through the tumultuous era of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the gathering storms of World War II, the years of the Roosevelts' greatest challenges and finest achievements. In her remarkably engaging narrative, Cook gives us the complete Eleanor Roosevelt— an adventurous, romantic woman, a devoted wife and mother, and a visionary policymaker and social activist who often took unpopular stands, counter to her husband's policies, especially on issues such as racial justice and women's rights. A biography of scholarship and daring, it is a book for all readers of American history.
About the Author
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) was the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and is widely considered one of America’s greatest First Ladies.
Allida Black is the preeminent Eleanor Roosevelt historian and the author of Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism and Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Bill Clinton is the forty-second President of the United States. He lives in Westchester, New York.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Becoming First Lady
2. Public and Private Domains
3. ER's Revenge: Henrietta Nesbit, Head Housekeeper
4. Mobilizing the Women's Network: Friendships, Press Conferences, Patronage
5. ER's New Deal for Women
6. Family Discord and the London Economic Conference
7. Private Times and Reports from Germany
8. Creating a New Community
9. The Quest for Racial Justice
10. The Crusade to End Lynching
11. Private Friendship, Public Time
12. Negotiating the Political Rapids
13. 1935: Promises and Compromises
14. The Victories of Summer, 1935
15: Mobilizing for New Action
16: A Silence Beyond Repair
17: Red Scare and Campaign Strategies, 1936
18: The Roosevelt Hearth, After Howe
19: The Election of 1936
20: Postelection Missions
21: Second Chance for the New Deal
22: 1937: To Build a New Movement
23: A First Lady's Survival: Work and Run
24: This Is My Story
25: This Troubled World, 1938
26: Race Radicals, Youth and Hope
27: Storms on Every Front
Notes
Notes on Sources and Selected Bibliography
Index