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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I wish someone with skill or less bias had written this, September 13, 2008
I am one of those that thinks that the Roosevelts' marriage would have been COMPLETELY different had FDR even ONCE, told his mother to lay off Eleanor. The Memoir of Norman Littell, Asst. Attorney General and confidant of the Roosevelts' daughter quotes Anna as talking about all the times when they were kids how at the dinner table Sara would talk about "all the pretty girls dad could have married" and Eleanor would leave the table in tears and FDR - the one person who could have brought it to a stop - let it happen. Eleanor must have thought after years of this that FDR agreed with Sara.
FDR and Sara saw to it that the kids associated them with fun and Eleanor the sole dispenser of discipline. In fact, even in the White House FDR made Eleanor fire household staff he wanted fired and to do so while he was out of town. Clementine Churchill thought that FDR was the most self-centered, selfish man she'd ever met. That's saying something. And Sara was a big part of that aspect of his character.
One reviewer here talks about the problems in the Roosevelt marriage and how Sara picked up the slack, but this view assumes that Sara's interference with the kids - regularly over-ruling FDR and ER in their discipline, etc. did not contribute to the disruption in the R's marriage or their kids' lives. This undermining of parental authority continued into the White House. Sara's generosity was not without its price.
Groups of three are always unstable. Hell, ask the Supremes and the Andrews Sisters. They don't work.
As others here have said: there's no purpose served at this point trying to use one to trash the other.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Shallow and Superficial, June 17, 2005
This review is from: Sara and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Her Daughter-in-Law, Eleanor Roosevelt (Hardcover)
As a long-time student of the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, I am always eager to expand my knowledge of these two important Americans. Thus, when I stumbled across this book, I immediately ordered it. However, it didn't take me long to discover that this read more like a book report based on Geoffrey Ward's excellent biographies of FDR than an original work. I respect the author for her turning the viewpoint around and taking a sympathetic look at Sara Delano Roosevelt, but her historical perspective lacks rigor and does not agree with any of the other major historians who have offered razor-sharp looks at the lives of the Roosevelts. Indeed, this book reads like a piece of fluff and the author's uncompromising adoration of Sara Roosevelt leads to unsupported conclusions and apologetics in Sara's relationship with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Sara comes off in this book as simply too good to be true, a paragon of virtue, and an angel-made-flesh. There is little critical information related here, just a retelling of the same old story in a revisionist vein. This is not the book for serious students of history and anyone else seeking factual information on the subject.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Eleanor Roosevelt In Opposite-Land, April 7, 2008
If this book contains any accurate information, it is, sadly, smothered in an overpoweringly cheesy sauce of conjecture, misrepresentation and fabrication.
This book has oppositional-defiant disorder; every positive (and painstakingly researched) piece of information we have about Eleanor Roosevelt (from a long list of books written by a stable of better researchers and writers than Ms. Pottker) is systematically twisted, distorted, inverted and stood on its head in order to make Eleanor Roosevelt look like the wicked witch of Val-Kill while/by making Sara Delano Roosevelt appear to be the Mother Theresa of mother-in-laws.
(Okay. That was an exaggeration. But, not a gross exaggeration. There are many facts in the book which are verifiably true: Sara Delano Roosevelt was FDR's mother, Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman, the three of them shared meals on at least three separate occasions, Eleanor's children were, in fact, Sara's grandchildren...etc... But it seems to me that an awful lot of the book is, to put it charitably, less than trustworthy.)
However, you might want to take a look at the book in a library or bookstore in order to see what the "notes" on sources section looks like. I have never seen a more stunning example of incompetence or contempt for one's readers than this haphazard list of sources.
And that's all it is: a list. No way to figure out which quote or fact came from which source, just a list. If Columbia could revoke degrees, this list of sources would be a powerful reason for the university to consider de-doctorating Pottker, and returning her tuition as quickly and quietly as possible.
I still can not believe St. Martin's published this fictional revision of history and dared to call it biography.
One can't help wondering whether Ms. Pottker has a daughter-in-law of her own and a very, very dull axe. (the kind that gets lots of grinding)
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