This new book about Eleanor Roosevelt's personal involvement WWII reads like the most entertaining historical fiction but is a nonfiction biography. Author Shannon McKenna Schmidt did her research. The book comes to life through the primary sources she dug up and weaves throughout the text. The First Lady of World War II is an engaging and inspiring book about a little-known piece of American history. ( )

WW2, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, history, history-and-culture, famous-persons, Pacific-theater-of-operations, 1943*****

When I was a teenager I wanted to learn how to knit sox because the woman who embodied the United Nations to me and others was often pictured knitting sox while waiting for whatever came next.
This book does justice to that woman and how she faced down the malignant racism and misogyny in the militaries of more than just the USA as well as the foolish back home. But not those who cared about the men in their command, like Adm. Halsey and others. Or the men she spoke with under rigorous conditions of war in the tropics.
The author has taken a massive amount of research materials and formed all that into a very readable accounting of Eleanor's time in the Pacific in 1943 as she herself reported it to the general public via radio and newspapers as well as the reports that she sent back to the President.
I was disappointed that the e-book did not have the photos that were credited at the end.
I requested and received an EARC from Sourcebooks via NetGalley. Thank you! ( )