Author Description

Alice Roosevelt Longworth was acknowledged as the outrageous media star in the White House during her father's Presidency. When a friend asked whether Teddy could restrain his daughter, President Roosevelt answered that he could run the country or Alice, but he couldn't do both. By contrast, Teddy's niece Eleanor, who was Alice's polar opposite in personality, also captured the hearts of the country when she entered the White House 24 years later as First Lady. Shy and deferential, Eleanor came to politics through her commitment to social justice while flamboyant, defiant Alice had been weaned on politics. Political and personal rivals, Alice and Eleanor were intimately connected to the U.S. Presidency through 45 dramatic years. Each learned to wield power effectively through her unique style and for her distinct purpose. After Alice's White House wedding to dapper Ohio Congressman, Republican Nick Longworth, she became her father's chief confidant and made the Senate gallery her personal playground, despite her husband serving as Speaker of the House. Eleanor overcame personal traumas to emerge as "First Lady of the World." Before entering the White House as the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, she had earned her reputation as the most powerful woman in the Democratic party and a lifelong advocate of women, children and labor rights. Alice and Eleanor, A Contrast in Style and Purpose explores the lifelong personal struggles, political involvement, and private relationship of these remarkable women. Each chapter begins with a fictionalized event to make the characters come alive with immediacy and vitality. As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, only fiction can reveal "the inner workings of the soul." Coupled with an interpretation of the people, events and the times that molded them, this book explores what led Alice and Eleanor to their unique place in American history.