The Roosevelt Women: A Portrait In Five Generations - Hardcover

Caroli, Betty Boyd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465071333 ISBN 13: 9780465071333

Publisher: Basic Books, 1998

Synopsis

The Roosevelt name conjures up images of powerful Presidents and dashing men of high society. But few people know much about the extraordinary network of women that held the Roosevelt clan together through war, scandal, and disease. In The Roosevelt Women , Betty Boyd Caroli weaves together stories culled from a rich store of letters, memoirs, and interviews to chronicle nine extraordinary Roosevelt women across a century and a half of turbulent history.She examines the Roosevelt women as mothers, daughters, wives, and, beyond that, as world travelers, authors, campaigners, and socialites—in short, as themselves. She reveals how they demonstrated the energy and intellectual curiosity that defined their famous family, as well as the roles they played in the intrigues, scandals, and accomplishments that were hallmarks of the Roosevelt clan. From the much maligned Sara Delano (who sired Franklin and by turns terrified and supported Eleanor) to Theodore's irrepressible daughter, Alice (”I can either rule the country or control Alice,” Teddy once said) to the beloved Bamie, who was the only mother Alice ever knew, and the model of everything she never was in life, to the exceptionally beautiful but ultimately overwhelmed Mittie, Theodore's mother, The Roosevelt Women is an intricate portrait of bold and talented women, a grand tale of both unbearable tragedies and triumphant achievements.

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Reviews

With numerous full biographies available, there is something unsatisfying about Caroli's brief, chapter-length life-summaries for Theodore Roosevelt's sharp-tongued daughter, Alice Longworth, and her less-quarrelsome cousin Eleanor Roosevelt, so often the target of Alice's barbs. More valuable are Caroli's profiles of fascinating Roosevelts less familiar to readers and biographers, women such as TR's second daughter, Ethel Derby (who died in 1977 after a lifetime of good works), and his niece Corinne Alsop (Republican political activist and mother of journalist Joseph Alsop), not to mention his sisters Corinne Robinson (writer and prot?g?e of Edith Wharton) and Anna Cowles (one of TR's most savvy political advisers). At the end of the book, one is left wishing Caroli (First Ladies and Inside the White House) had cast a wider net in her search for featured players. Why, for example, does preeminent anthropologist Anna C. Roosevelt (the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" award) rate only five or six lines? And why do Selwa (Lucky) Roosevelt's few lines contain no hint of her distinguished foreign service career, or its culmination with the post of chief of protocol for the U.S. under Ronald Reagan? This often good book would have been much better without these and similar errors of omission. Illustrated.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It was ideas and ideals that drove the Roosevelt women, particularly those influenced by the genes of Georgia belle Mittie Bulloch, says the author in this curiously engrossing overview of the Roosevelt XX-factor. As she researched an earlier book, First Ladies (not reviewed), historian Caroli was intrigued by the question of who provided Eleanor Roosevelt with models. Her mentor at an English boarding school is often given the credit, but Eleanor spent only three years at Allenswood, a brief respite in a life racked by early tragedy (the death of brother, mother, and father) and later turmoil (within a five-year span, the birth of her sixth child, discovery of her husband's well-established affair with Lucy Mercer, and Franklin's attack of polio). Caroli believes it was the influence of her aunts, cousins, and even her maligned mother-in-law, Sara, that set Eleanor on the path to becoming ``First Lady of the World.'' A chapter each is devoted to the primary exemplars, beginning with the matriarch, Martha (Mittie) Bulloch, who married a Theodore Roosevelt and moved to New York City not long before the Civil War, knowing she would face prejudice and misunderstanding because her family owned slaves. She toughed it out, giving birth to four children, including the future president Theodore and Eleanor's father, Elliott. Mittie's daughters Anna, known for her warmth, wit, and political acumen, and Corinne, also politically astute and in later life a sought-after public speaker, each receive a chapter, as do Eleanor and cousins Corinne Alsop, Ethel Derby, and Alice Longworth, Teddy's tart- tongued daughter. Sara (Franklin's mother) and Edith (Teddy's second wife), although Roosevelts only by marriage, share a chapter where the author tries to correct Sara's image as dominating and manipulative, and Edith's as the perfect wife and mother. Great fun for Roosevelt buffs; filling in some gaps for those still unable to reconcile how the awkward, uncertain Eleanor became an international icon. (photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465071333
• ISBN 13: 9780465071333
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528