Intellectuals, academics, and most of the media slapped a halo over FDR to consecrate both his welfare state and his warring.

For all the books written about FDR, there's room on the shelf for a great one-volume life that does full justice to who he was, what he overcame and what he achieved. This one isn't it, though it's ...

I always try to be as generous as possible to a fellow biographer of the same subject, but I cannot claim that this book brings much that is new to the extensive FDR literature. It is in fact a ...

How can one write history so that it seems like a thriller? How does one write a biography without making the subject the centerpiece of the narrative? I have no idea if David Pietrusza asked himself ...

Last things first. 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. I don't think I've ever read another ...

Pioneering first lady Eleanor Roosevelt got the fully fleshed portrait she deserved in the first volume of Blanche Wiesen Cook's biography, which told the compelling story of a shy, lonely rich girl ...

Beloved and reviled, a spokeswoman for progressive causes who fashioned an independent life within a complicated marriage, Eleanor Roosevelt cuts a surprisingly contemporary figure. For several ...