Examines the relationship between cousins Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, "revealing the contentious bond between two political trailblazers who short-circuited the rules of gender and power, each in her own way"--Dust jacket flap.

After William McKinley's assassination, Theodore Roosevelt arrives in Washington in 1901 as the youngest President of the United States. He is unwilling to let Congress dictate federal policies and he knows how to use his immense popularity with the press to disseminate his message to the public. With TR's presidency comes a string of firsts - the first to be known by his initials, the first to leave the country while in office, the first to own an...

The Three Graces of Val-Kill changes the way we think about Eleanor Roosevelt. Emily Wilson examines what she calls the most formative period in Roosevelt's life, from 1922 to 1936, when she cultivated an intimate friendship with Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook, who helped her build a cottage on the Val-Kill Creek in Hyde Park on the Roosevelt family land. In the early years, the three women--the "three graces," as Franklin Delano Roosevelt called...