The Roosevelt Cousins: Growing Up Together, 1882-1924

From the politics of the dinner table to the politics of Washington, D.C., Linda Donn (Freud and Jung: Years of Friendship and Loss) probes the people and the relationships in one of America's most important families in The Roosevelt Cousins: Growing Up Together, 1882-1942. With chapters like ""Shifting Alliances"" and ""Schisms,"" the volume seems to suggest that the cousins sometimes behaved more like warring nations than relatives. In this careful and serious study, Donn calls into question popular myths about Eleanor's mousiness and FDR's relationship to his mother, and provides plenty of insight into a clan that played out its family dramas on a national stage. (Nov. 4)