Casting Her Own Shadow; Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism

New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 24 cm. xiv, [2], 298, [6] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Inscribed by the author on half-title page. Allida Black is Research Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University and Project Director and Editor of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, which is designed to preserve, teach and apply Eleanor Roosevelt's writings and discussions of human rights and democratic politics. She has received the JNG Finley Postdoctoral Fellowship at George Mason University, as well as fellowships from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, and the Harry Truman Foundation. She received her Ph.D. from the George Washington University in 1993. Her publications include four books -- Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism, "What I Want to Leave Behind:" Democracy and the Selected Articles of Eleanor Roosevelt; Courage In A Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt, and with Jewel Fenzi, Democratic Women: An Oral History of the Women's National Democratic Club. Derived from a Kirkus review: Eleanor Roosevelt receives her due as a leading influence on recent American liberal thought. Roosevelt spent much of her life laboring in the shadow of her husband, president of the US for an unprecedented 13 years. In the 17 years remaining to her after his death, when she no longer had to defer to his political requirements, Roosevelt reveled in developing what Black calls ``the expertise necessary to build a legacy of her own.'' Black ably emphasizes the key points of that legacy, among them an enduring commitment to civil rights and women's issues, which Roosevelt had been pressing since the 1920s. Long a political activist and writer, Roosevelt had early on established a reputation of her own; Black makes the interesting claim that, thanks to her writing, Roosevelt was better known than her husband when he entered national politics, and she shows how Roosevelt maintained her own identity even as her husband's advisors urged her to keep a lower profile. Black's book is a thoughtful study in Roosevelt's sophisticated political ideas. Black covers Roosevelt's work in dismantling racism, promoting full employment and worker's rights, and combating the excesses of the Red Scare.