No Ordinary Time; Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Fifteenth Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 759, [7] pages. Illustrations. A Note on Sources. Notes. Bibliography. Index. DJ has some wear and soiling. Inscribed by author on fep. Pencil erasure residue on fep. Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin (born January 4, 1943) is an American biographer, historian, and political commentator. Goodwin has authored biographies of several U.S. presidents, including Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga; Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; and her most recent book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. Goodwin's book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995. Kearns taught government at Harvard for 10 years, including a course on the American presidency. During this period, she also assisted Johnson in drafting his memoirs. Her first book Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, which drew upon her conversations with the late president, was published in 1977, becoming a New York Times bestseller and provided a launching pad for her literary career. Derived from a Kirkus review: A superb dual portrait of the 32nd President and his First Lady, whose extraordinary partnership steered the nation through the perilous WW II years. In the period covered by this biography, FDR was elected to unprecedented third and fourth terms and nudged the country away from isolationism into war. It is by now a given that Eleanor was not only an indispensable adviser to this ebullient, masterful statesman, but a political force in her own right. Goodwin is uncommonly sensitive to their complex relationship's shifting undercurrents, which ranged from deep mutual respect to lingering alienation caused by FDR's infidelity. One element creating tension was tactical politics: FDR, seeing increased arms production as crucial to the war effort, sought to close the divide between businessmen and his administration, while Eleanor prodded him not to forget about labor, civil rights, and Jewish refugees. Franklin also could react testily to her unremitting lobbying at times when he desperately needed relief from the strains of running the war effort.