Customer Reviews

Sara and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Her Daughter-in-Law, Eleanor Roosevelt

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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.

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.

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)

I really wanted to like this book more, since I have several books about the Roosevelts (both the Hyde Park clan and the Oyster Bay contingent). I did enjoy the story of Sara's background and her interesting childhood, not to mention the history of the Delano family and the "color" of some of the events, like the royal visit. I also appreciated a text that did not demonize "Mama." Eleanor's half of the story, however, reveals nothing new--her sad childhood, her depression and insecurity because of it, her slow rise to independence--and suffers at the expense of the author's efforts to improve Sara Roosevelt's image. In addition to the historical errors mentioned in Sylvia Jukes Morris' featured "Washington Post" review, there is an extremely grievious one: Pottker talks about the events of March 1911, then follows with two paragraphs about the "next month," concerning an oceanic calamity: the sinking of the Titanic! Except the Titanic sank in April *1912*. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Does no one edit these books any longer?

I started to read this book with hardly any opinion about the two main characters. I soon started to realize the author's bias towards Sara and against Eleanore! She uses subjective snide remarks about Eleanore to promote Sara. In her book Sara can do nothing wrong while everything Eleanore does is questionable and fraught with ulterior motives.

Who among us wouldn't want to have been Sara Delano Roosevelt? Adored daughter and sibling, independently wealthy through her father's success in the Chinese opium trade, married to an older man whose forebears were as securely rooted in America as her own, she became the mother of one perfect child who grew up to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Self-doubt was not in the emotional vocabulary of either of FDR's parents, who raised him in the country splendor of their estate in Hyde Park, New York. Jan Pottker takes an intriguing look into the life of Sara Delano Roosevelt, and entwines it with her relationship with FDR's wife, his fifth cousin Eleanor Roosevelt. The book is a feast of anecdotes. Finding them and displaying them appears to be Pottker's greatest strength as a biographer. Everyone's heard the story of how the King and Queen of England came to Hyde Park in 1939 and enjoyed an informal hot-dog lunch. But who knew that 200,000 people lined the road from Poughkeepsie to Hyde Park to greet the royal couple? Or that when the formal dinner for the visiting royalty was delayed an hour, "the roast beef remained pink in the center"?

Keeping life, well, rosy appears to have been the leitmotif of Sara's life, and the polar opposite of her daughter-in-law Eleanor's. Much has been written about Eleanor's deep insecurity, having been orphaned young and passed around among relatives, and Pottker covers no new territory here. However, it makes the reader squirm to see Eleanor's dutiful, doubtful personality wither somewhat in the face of Sara's utter self-confidence. Eleanor appears to have spent her thirty-six years of married life abjectly begging Sara's pardon, bickering with her, or silently, sullenly yielding to her mother-in-law's will, which was as formidable as her control over the extended family's pursestrings.

In her effort to provide a rounded portrait of Sara, Pottker often provides contrasting anecdotes about her daughter-in-law that almost always cast Eleanor in a bad light. This is unfortunate, as neither woman needs to play the bad guy at this late date. Both Sara and Eleanor were remarkable women, but where the latter learned to find her greatest fulfillment outside the unnourishing bosom of her family, the former started life strengthened by the best that the Victorian era could provide a girl, and only later yielded graciously to satisfying the interest of the world in her role as the President's mother. The contrast between the two women is sufficient without Pottker's effort to cast Eleanor in a lesser light so as to illuminate Sara further.

Yes, she did frequently tell her grandchildren, "You are my true children. Eleanor only bore you." But in light of their parents' increasingly separate lives and chaotic schedules, Sara and Hyde Park were the constant touchstones while her grandchildren were growing up.

Had Sara not subsidized the family as she did, her son could not have run for president and guided the country through the Depression and World War II. We, as a nation, are richer for her generosity. However, the dependency that she encouraged in her son, which he never appears to have refused, seemed to have born bitter fruit in the unfulfilled potential in the subsequent generation: There were nineteen divorces among the five Roosevelt children, none of whom appears to have sustained a notably happy or successful adult life despite their financial and social advantages. Elliott and James in particular made something of a cottage industry of writing and being interviewed about their parents. They are quoted extensively--perhaps too extensively--throughout Pottker's book.

Pottker interviewed Anna Roosevelt's two eldest children, the great-grandchildren whose memories provide a living link with the matriarch born in 1854. (Interestingly, Curtis Dall--once known to the nation as "Buzzie"--dropped his father's name to use Roosevelt as a surname.) She also provides the insights of Nina Roosevelt Gibson, Ph.D., the psychologist daughter of John, the youngest Roosevelt child, who is almost never quoted by Roosevelt biographers.

This book is a welcome addition to our knowledge of the Roosevelts--and, as Sara would point out if she were here, of the Delanos as well, whose family background she privately considered to be superior.

The largest, sturdiest oak at Hyde Park inexplicably toppled to the ground only minutes after Sara died there at the age of eighty-six. Though witnesses were startled, no one was surprised.

Very informative, certainly showed another view of Eleanor. While Eleanor may be changed her view of Sara in her (Eleanor's) later years, it apepared to me that the Eleanor we love would not have existed without Sara's influence. I was surprised that Sara has been so much forgotten by history, not that Presidential mothers are often remembered. It lent great insight to Eleanor and FDR also. Certainly Sara was a 'lady' in the very old sense and also a woman who could and did change with the times. I found it enjoyable and would recommend it to anyone with an eye for history, politics and the Roosevelts and well as women of influence.

...and certainly disagreed with the fellow who pompusly states that the book is not for serious scholars, is superficial, etc. Does he speak with the Voice of Authority? Being a "History Major" and with the arrogance of youth, he (or perhaps wishes, as gods are entitled, capital letter, ok He) knows everything of course. The actions of Sara Roosevelt, and her many many letters, speak for themselves, the author did not make them up or create them from air. This was a marvelous woman, and it's about time someone spoke up for her. As for the book, I found it most interesting and enjoyable.