5465, Franklin and Lucy President Roosevelt, Mrs..Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life, by Joseph E. Persico (read 27 Apr 2017) I decided to read this book because I was so impressed by the author's book Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour about the end of World War One, which I read 5 Sep 2005. Ths book on FDR and his love life is expertly organized and tells the story with unfailing interest, even though the author includes a lot of gossip and hearsay and maybe pays too much attention to comments and opinions of people not too knowledgeable. One cannot of course admire the moral failings of the people he tells about, but the account is absorbingly interesting and his concluding chapters say many good and true things about the President, his wife, and Lucy and the events related of those so poignant days in April 1945 (which I remember so well, though I of course knew nothing of Lucy nor of dire state of FDR's health) are super poignant. This book is surely the definitive book on the whole situation. ( )

Sure Jean Edward Smith's FDR is a more serious political biography, but this is a lot more interesting. It would be too dismissive to call this the National Enquirer version of Roosevelt, as if it merely addressed our curiosity about who really had sex with whom, when and why. While Persico's telling reveals FDR as a shallow cad, it also shows him grow and change and reveals and explores his famed exuberant resilience. Then, also, FDR did have a unique position - do ordinary human expectations apply? Does self-absorbtion and a desire to be adored and served by many women while maintaining his emotional distance constitute a character defect for one in his position or is that kind of polygamy merely an inevitable component of the personality and desire of any emperor? I would modestly suggest that if the names Missy LeHand and Lucy Rutherford don't immediately spring to mind when you think of FDR, then, like me, you may have until now missed certain deep truths about the 1920s to 1940s in FDR's America. This is a book that can and should shape one's understanding of the play of power, sex and personality. It is revealing. Through it all, there is Eleanor, always the odd woman out, working through her own place and agenda in the prison that was the Roosevelt marriage and White House, and ultimately finding her own freedom. Watching the cavortings and machinations of powerful upper class families in the early 20th century, tracing the interplay of sex, money and power in their lives, is like watching a train wreck - interesting, horrifying, painful, and entertaining. In the end, the humanity of the Roosevelts and their friends and allies shines through in Persico's narrative. I found myself unable to dislike these self-important people to nearly the extent that my class biases predispose me. Of the two recent studies of Roosevelt that I've read, this one certainly seems to get closer to the heart of the man, situating him at the center of his own gravitational force field, a Sun King, around whom men, women and an entire era ultimately revolved.
October 5 2009 ( )

Absolutely love reading about Franklin, Eleanor, Lucy and everyone else connected with them. The family backgrounds were fascinating. ( )

The title Franklin and Lucy is a bit deceptive as the book also discusses Mrs Roosevelt and theories about her inner circle of friends. As a "fan" of the Roosevelts, biographies, and a amateur historian I found the book interesting and am glad to make it a part of my library but I consider some of the information more speculative than based on facts-especially when it came to Mrs. Roosevelt.It did not seem to take into fact for instance that people when writing letters to friends tended to be a bit flowery and the language a bit different. As, example, a writer did not mean "my dearest" in the way we might intend it today. ( )

Although I found the book interesting, there was no new information
or insight. It was quite like reading a tabloid with a lot of
speculation and again, nothing new.