Grande Dame

Eleanor Roosevelt: The War Years and After, 1939–1962, by Blanche Wiesen Cook (Viking, 688 pp., $40)

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Little Anna Eleanor was a troubled child. She spent much of her girlhood following her mother and father on their pilgrimages to European spas and Kur­häuser; daddy had a drinking problem and was to die at 34. She was ten at the time, a “plain, insecure, lonely little girl,” “sullen and rebellious,” who was ex­pelled from her French convent school “for tantrums and lies.”

She entered the Allenswood school in England, and became the favorite pupil of the headmistress, Marie Souvestre; in that Sapphic atmosphere of poetry and high ideals, she throve. But her grandmother summoned her back to America, where she made her debut and married cousin Franklin.

Michael Knox Beran

About the Author

Michael Knox Beran

Michael Knox Beran, a lawyer and writer, is the author of WASPs: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy.

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