Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism - Hardcover

Allida M. Black

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231104049 ISBN 13: 9780231104043

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1996

Synopsis

Black shows how Eleanor Roosevelt, after being freed from the constraints imposed by her role in the White House, eagerly expanded her career and unabashedly challenged both the Democratic party and American liberals to practice what they preach.

About this title

Review:

In Casting Her Own Shadow, historian Allida Black chronicles Eleanor Roosevelt's considerable---if often unacknowledged---influence on liberal politics. Throughout her adult life, Roosevelt campaigned for civil rights and women's issues, conducting a vigorous campaign of editorials in publications like Redbook and The New York Times to advance the causes she espoused. She enjoyed a huge following, Black notes, not least because her writing was commonsensical and good-humored, even when Roosevelt was clearly irritated. "I am beginning to think," she once observed, for instance, "that if you have been a liberal, and if you believe that those who are strong must sometimes consider the weak, and that with strength and power goes responsibility, automatically some people will consider you a Communist." Better known than her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he entered national politics, Eleanor managed to keep her own identity even as his advisors urged her to keep a lower profile and stay out of the news. What bearing does all this have on the present? Well, this is a matter being played out even now in Washington, for no one quite resembles Roosevelt so much as Hillary Clinton, whose work as a politician and newspaper columnist echoes Roosevelt's---and who has been similarly reviled for expressing independent ideas.

From Publishers Weekly:

In contrast to Blanche Cook's Eleanor Roosevelt (LJ 2/15/92) and Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time (LJ 9/15/94), which emphasize Eleanor Roosevelt's personality and social circumstances, this concise study argues that she was the most influential liberal powerbroker of the post-World War II era. Black (history, George Washington Univ.) does not attempt to flesh out Roosevelt's strong personality, which won the admiration of the public but angered the KKK and other extremist groups; instead, she focuses on Roosevelt's political career. Black is at her best while chronicling her subject's tenacious support for the civil rights of African Americans and the civil liberties of those accused of Communist leanings. Roosevelt, according to Black, redefined the role of First Lady and, more than any contemporary politician, promoted the liberal agenda?affordable housing, public education, and affirmative action?under attack today. Recommended for women's studies collections.?Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0231104049
• ISBN 13: 9780231104043
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 298