Cook also explored what she controversially identified as an erotic friendship between Eleanor and reporter Lorena Hickok.īut her primary concern as a biographer has been on Eleanor's growth into a savvy, impassioned activist, particularly on behalf of New Deal programs and civil rights in this volume, the reach of Eleanor's activism expands to refugee rescue and the founding of the United Nations. In earlier volumes, Cook described Eleanor's emotionally deprived childhood and delved into the complex marital partnership that evolved between Eleanor and Franklin. This abrupt ending to a biography whose publication has stretched over almost a quarter of a century speaks to both Cook's priorities, as well as to Eleanor's. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

You have to look elsewhere to find out that she was ill for the final two years of her life and that tuberculosis was the culprit.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Eleanor Roosevelt Subtitle The War Years and After, 1939-1962 Author Blanche Wiesen Cook Yet, she compacts her subject's post-White House years into a brief 'Epilogue' and says nothing about the personal struggles that Eleanor faced as a widow, or the physical challenges she contended with as she aged.Ĭook doesn't even mention the cause of Eleanor's death on Nov. I don't think I've ever read another biography where the death of the subject is noted in an aside of less than 10 words, on the second to last page of the book.īear in mind that, with this third and concluding volume, Cook has devoted almost 2,000 pages to Eleanor's life.

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the third volume of Blanche Wiesen Cook's monumental biography of Eleanor Roosevelt is the way it ends. Eleanor Roosevelt, shown here in London in 1959, continued to work on behalf of progressive causes after her tenure as First Lady ended.

Eleanor roosevelt volume 1