Sunday, August 9, 2009

Eleanor and Franklin


Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph Lash

1972 Pulitzer for Biography

I read this with Pulitzer_literature on Yahoo. Or tried to. Only a couple of us went past the point of pain and no one was able to finish it. Joseph Lash was a friend of Eleanor's. He was a reporter she met through a youth organization. So the book is 90% hero worship of Eleanor. And since it was written by a reporter it reads like a newspaper article...a looong article. It's full of names, dates and places but there isn't much personality.

About halfway through the book I skipped about a chapter and a half by accident and didn't even know it. So about 3/4's of the way in I realized it when someone asked Eleanor about Franklin's polio. I didn't know he had it yet. I'd read a quarter of the book and Lash mentioned crutches once but I thought he was talking figuratively.
You'd assume polio would have a greater influence on their lives than Lash indicated.

This book was a waste of time.

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