| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Eleanor Roosevelt. Vol. 2: 1933–1938. By Blanche Wiesen Cook. (New York: Viking, 1999. xviii, 686 pp. $34.95, isbn 0-670-84498-5.)

Eleanor Roosevelt is the icon of twentieth-century womanhood. More than twenty books about her are in print, including the controversial first volume of Blanche Wiesen Cook's Eleanor Roosevelt. Volume 2, some six hundred pages, covers only six years, 1933–1938, the first half of the twelve-year presidency of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The result is a rich resource on the life of this towering figure. Readers will find in the introduction a discerning analysis of the sometimes overwhelming facts detailed in the rest of the book. 1

Women's issues came to the fore in the New Deal, and Cook amply illustrates ER's influence in getting them addressed. Cook compiles an impressive number of instances when Eleanor Roosevelt was ahead of her husband in promoting progressive causes: housing, civil rights, labor relations, social security, health care, a department of health and education, deficit spending in a depression, youth leadership, the Spanish Civil War, and international engagement. Cook argues that ER was useful to FDR because she could serve as a test balloon for programs he was not ready to endorse. . . .

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