I've just finished reading No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her Team of Rivals is in my top favs, and this one was a treat as well. It covers FDR and Eleanor in the home front during WWII. Paul's grandfather was an engineer on D-Day, and his grandmother was pregnant with my mother-in-law at home. So there's two votes for reading this one. Oh, and it did win the Pulitzer.
I would recommend this book because she didn't try to gloss over any bad bits just because these two are so famous and reveared. You can tell she respects them highly by the research she did and the delicate way she wonders about their personal lives, which were complex to say the least. The first book I read about Eleanor was mainly about her work in the United Nations after the war. This one covered more of her personality and family ties.
The book talks a lot about the advancement of equality for women and blacks during the war, and how the war inadvertantly got us out of the depression. But the overall theme of the book, the one I enjoyed the most, was the fact that united with purpose, America and Americans can do anything. I'm so proud to be an American, I just wish our country could get back to that kind of wholistic patriotism, without needing Hitler.
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