Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s evolving relationship with African Americans challenged her beliefs about herself and the world she had been raised in.
Editor’s Note: David Michaelis is the author of seven books, including the bestselling biography, N. C. Read more >>
She functioned as Franklin Roosvelt's de facto chief-of-staff, yet Missy LeHand's role has been misrepresented and overlooked by historians.
Franklin D. Read more >>
Why the UN was in trouble from the start
A novelist who has just spent several years with them tells a moving story of love: public and private, given and withheld
In the FDR Library in Hyde Park, among the effects of Anna Roosevelt Halsted, the only daughter of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, there is a scrap of yellowing paper, about four inches by five. Read more >>
At a time when it can offer answers to urgent questions, we have forgotten America’s long history of “nation building.”
In late January 2002 Hamid Karzai, the newly installed leader of Afghanistan, visited Washington and New York. He received a standing ovation at the President’s State of the Union address, and glowing press attention, in no small part because of his gentle demeanor and splendid attire. Read more >>
It has been with us since Plymouth Colony. But that’s not why it’s an American institution.
On September evening in 1918, while unpacking an overseas bag for her husband, who had returned from a fact-finding tour of war-torn Europe with double pneumonia, Eleanor Roosevelt came upon a cache of love letters from her social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Read more >>
I was a writer on the staff of the Hunter College newspaper when Eleanor Roosevelt, completely alone, would stop by looking for someone to talk to.
The Roosevelt townhouse was only three blocks from Hunter College’s main building at Park Avenue at Sixty-eighth Street, and one day in 1940 Eleanor just walked in off the street. The door she opened was the entrance to Echo, the college magazine. Read more >>
FDR and Eleanor could do just about anything—beat a Depression, win a world war—except please each other
When Harry Hopkins first appeared at No. 10 Downing Street in January of 1941, Winston Churchill did not know what to make of him. Read more >>
First Ladies have been under fire ever since Albert Gallatin called Abigail Adams “Mrs. President”
I am informed that whenever Rush Limbaugh has cause to mention Hillary Rodham Clinton, he cues in “Hail to the Chief” as background music. There’s nothing like subtlety. Read more >>
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s honeymoon was a lavish grand tour through a sunny, hospitable Europe. It was also filled with signs of the mutual bafflement that would one day embitter their marriage.
The captain of a transatlantic liner was his ship’s social arbiter as well as her commander. In consultation with the purser—and often only after contacting the home office—he carefully surveyed the passenger list, selecting from it for his own table in the great dining saloon that handful of men and women whose prominence was so obvious that even the most socially ambitious travelers would be willing to accept assignment elsewhere.
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A biographer who knows it well tours Franklin Roosevelt’s home on the Hudson and finds it was not so much the President’s castle as it was his formidable mother’s.
For better than four years now I have been writing about Franklin Roosevelt’s youth, seeking the sources of the serene selfassurance that served him and his country so well during the two worst crises since the Civil War. Read more >>
Here is how political cartoonists have sized up the candidates over a tumultuous half-century.
AMERICANS HAVE BEEN turning out political cartoons since the dawn of the Republic, but in the nineteenth century the drawings tended to be verbose and cluttered, their characters trailing long ribbons of speech balloons as they stumbled ov Read more >>
The ground rules have changed drastically since 1789. Abigail Adams, stifled in her time, would have loved being First Lady today.
ONCE AGAIN the candidates gear up for a national election; not only the candidates but their wives too. And pity the ladies! Read more >>
An Intimate Memoir
My husband, David Gurewitsch, was the personal physician of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt from the White House years until her death in 1962. On a 1947 flight to Switzerland, when Mrs. Read more >>
Eleanor Roosevelt thought the "young man from Massachusetts" was a fine senator, but too inexperienced to be President.
She was the most powerful woman in America, if not the world. He was the junior senator from the state of Massachusetts. She wanted no position or favor, only to extend her already enormous influence, something she professed not to have. Read more >>
“She is such a funny child, so old-fashioned, that we always call her ‘Granny’ “her mother said. Cousin Franklin felt otherwise
By no strange quirk of fate, no unlikely chance or mysterious destiny, were Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt brought together in casual acquaintanceship. Read more >>
It was the first time in history that British sovereigns had come to see what they lost in 1776. George and Franklin, Elizabeth and Eleanor, hit it off like old friends; even Texas congressmen melted under the royal charm. Brewing was a crucial World War II alliance
A long line of nervous congressmen stood in the Capitol rotunda awaiting the arrival of someone of obviously high importance. Vice President John Nance Garner buzzed among the legislators trying to ease the tension with his famous stories. Read more >>
To what extent did greatness inhere in the man, and to what degree was it a product of the situation?
Seldom has an eminent man been more conscious of his place in history than was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He regarded history as an imposing drama and himself as a conspicuous actor. Read more >>