Betty Boyd Caroli

First Ladies Eleanor (Franklin's wife) and Edith (Theodore's) are both subjects of full-scale biographies, and Theodore's daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth remains legendary for her caustic wit. In this book, historian Betty Boyd Caroli looks at seven additional powerful Roosevelt women (the family ... (more)didn't seem to produce or marry any other kind) and notes some intriguing similarities despite the political differences that divided "Theodores" (stalwart Republicans like Corinne Roosevelt Robinson and her daughter, Corinne Robinson Alsop) and "Franklins" (Democrats such as Sara Delano Roosevelt, unjustly caricatured as the mother-in-law from hell). All these women descended from Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, a Georgia belle who married North and kept her Confederate sympathies quiet; they all were unusually independent and outspoken for women born in the 19th century; and several compensated for unsatisfying marriages with intense friendships. And they lived and breathed politics with a sense of noblesse oblige towards those not blessed with their wealth and privileges. Caroli's cogent group portrait restores to history neglected figures like Anna Roosevelt Cowles, whom some contemporaries felt would have made a better president than her younger brother Theodore, and puts well-known histories like Eleanor's in a revealing new context. —from the publisher's website