Eleanor Roosevelt

For more than thirty years, Eleanor Roosevelt was America's most powerful woman, yet few of us really knew her. Millions adored her, but her FBI file was thicker than a stack of phone books. She spoke out fearlessly for civil rights, and the KKK put a price on her head. She helped FDR rise to power, and was one of his most valuable political assets, but the media satirized her as an ugly busybody.

Drawing on interviews with her closest surviving relatives, friends, and biographers, as well as rare home-movie footage, Eleanor Roosevelt reveals the hidden dimensions of one of the century's most influential women. She was born to wealth and power, and orphaned at ten. Her private life was marked by tragedy, infidelity, and a never-ending search for intimacy. Yet she persevered, fighting tirelessly for social justice for all and taking a lead role in the United Nations' landmark Declaration of Human Rights.