Eleanor Roosevelt, Fighter for Justice: Her Impact on the Civil Rights Movement, the White House, and the World by Ilene Cooper (review)

There is no shortage of titles on the poor little rich daddy's girl Eleanor: raised by a grandmother; married to a handsome, womanizing distant cousin; betrayed at home but nonetheless ferociously dedicated to progressive causes for which her husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, provided her a public forum. Cooper, though, claims her own authorial turf by focusing on Eleanor Roosevelt's championing of civil rights, discussing not only her high-profile successes (integrating White House social circles, arguing for women's New Deal programs, standing up to the D.A.R. when they barred Marian Anderson from their concert hall) but also how often she was late to embrace these causes and occasionally even conflicted over their implementation. This nuanced treatment, which is more often reserved for older readers, translates well for a younger audience, who are unlikely to lose respect or admiration for the innovative First Lady even as they learn that the minorities she defended were often frustrated by her politically cautious strategies. Roosevelt family photographs, an excerpt from a 1940 speech by the then First Lady, a timeline, source citation, bibliography, and index are appended.