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Also there is a button at the bottom of your browser we are offering Free Shipping for the link and david is providing us with signed bookplates so this pass is assigned work in pandemic land. I will pass it over murder on margaret from the one director and then had a special collections at the state library of massachusetts david is a local boy he is the author of awardwinning biographies and i have no doubt that this book will add to his list of awards. He is also a fellow alumnus. The wall street journal calls the book suburban the New York Times says it is a terrific resource in my own personal connection with Eleanor Roosevelt which is when my mom was in junior high in the late forties mrs. Roosevelt came to visit her school in the bronx mia mom was a student chosen to escort her from the auditorium to the stage and experience of my mother talked about for the rest of her life. So without further ado join me to welcome margaret and beth and david. You actually just prove the point that i wanted to make to start this evening thank you for having me. It seems everybody has a connection to Eleanor Roosevelt growing up in cambridge you are aware George Washington slept here and around the country and he slept here it was a joke of the thirties is not just eleanor slept here but eleanor registered deeply with every person that she met and those memories just as your mothers was was lifelong and stayed with people i grew up in a household i thought she was related to me i thought she was a relative there was a sense of your presence the reason because my mom worked for eleanor at wgbh in its infancy when television was in its infancy National Education television was primitive where in the story one generation away from for five years and in 1959. Eleanor decided she would have a one hour per month seminar like show and she was on the board it was the primitive tv studio and there were tables and platforms running all through in the theater part of the auditorium but with those odd way she was very simple in her presentation on the show my mothers job was to pick which stress would be this month to go to the script she prepared and with the executive producer. During this period when i went to the studio i remember among my very earliest memories the impression that i had was in motion walking down a quick tour across tables and all i remember is somehow i kurds it might in one spot and move toward the figure and say two words. Juicy fruit. She looked down at me and had no stick of chewing gum but she had for me that her eyes and beamed out light as if there were light from within. Her smile was broad like a child asking for a stick of gum and accepting at that was the main thing she kindly told me she didnt have gone and i dont remember what else she said the memory is of a sense i was very close to goodness coming out of the human being in the form of light. This happened two other times in my life one very movingly with Nelson Mandela coming up broadway soon after his release and his arrival in the United States by chance i found myself downtown and as i walked toward broadway realizing something was happening just as i arrived, there was mandela in the parade his glance felt to the left of me but i could see the that same phenomenon of goodness appearing as light. I saw once in an artist when he was looking at something the same kind of attention when it was given a pure love of the subject the same thing happened and then strangely what connected me back to mrs. Roosevelt was the odd coincidence around 2001 i was given access to a basement on madison avenue and to go into the basement under the Office Building working for the records from the beginning of the peanuts cartoon character of Charles Schultz a cartoonist had been trying for a number of years to get his cartoon started and United Feature Syndicate was international that scholz was accepted by and his papers were down there i found him and the bankers boxes they are were the alphabetical r and the first one i saw to my left was roosevelt my day and i picked up the lid and magical dust into the air i lifted out a long galley i remember the first description i had an impression she had written a call him and didnt know anything about it at that moment but as i began reading a description of starlight from a sleeping porch on a fall morning early for morning and the gratefulness of morningstar to bring into the first paragraph i felt the same sense of wonder and attention and joy and love and thought why dont they keep reading this and then discovered scholz but i have a very strong feeling this needed to be continued and i needed to look more carefully and that was the beginning strangely on the same spot i later learned it had been franklins mothers house in new york city that he moved from when altman arrived in the neighborhood when commercial things began to arrive. And that was her moment of escape. But back to cambridge briefly i want to say before i turn it over and want to give a shout out to everybody and david thank you also to one of your neighbors digital and otherwise my grade assistant Eleanor Parker and i want to shout out also my train commuting buddy growing up in cambridge massachusetts the train ran from concorde and back and it was always are just jumping onto the train there were very few people in those days it was certified our oddball taking the train from Porter Square to concord so Porter Square remains outer limits that was very far away from life as a new early on so its always a highly literary event that im so proud to be at tonight. That was fascinating. I loved your connection to boston i thank you are a new york person now but the cambridge diehard in all of us in fact i had not appreciated your thorough connection to wgbh a partner of ours in the series we do have a lot of partners but one of ours is Porter Square books at the library and as many of you know we were in the series and i cannot think of a better person to be part of this series and Eleanor Roosevelt they are such looming the large figures in American History and eleanor in particular is such an inspiration particularly at this time for inclusion and diversity and for our great country she is such a role model and inspiring one particularly big fan so tell us about your and him and lets talk about the discussion. First want to apologize for being a little late. My computer shutdown have special collections at the state library at the massachusetts state how Downtown Boston and many of the things relating to massachusetts history and were happy to be a part of this group tonight. Margaret and i have written some questions for david and also compiled questions that came from people when they registered and watching for those that come in during the talk tonight. I am a huge fan of eleanors and it includes questions coming in from other people. Here is my first question my favorite line in the whole boo book, and there were many favorite was right after the dedication page before the table of contents its a quote from eleanor that says and for me to notice everything for me that sentence means everything that happens to her in the book and shapes her life. So i wondered if you could give us some context for that quotation and if you agree with my thoughts about it . I am so touched by your thoughts because that is what i hoped it would sound as an overture to her life use to listen to your ankle, and that had some of the sound i thought of eleanors great expansion from her own personal life to the life of the country. I think her ability to notice began when she was very young and something of a survival or coping mechanism and became something i almost was shocked how many people left records of her staring at them are looking so carefully when she didnt think someone was noticing her she will look carefully at them. And in want of democracies great principles that reciprocity everybody counts everybodys life and rights are to be equally judged and taken into account i think eleanors noticing was also extremely democratic and equal Opportunity One of the things everybody who did meet her come into contact with her felt about her they felt seen by someone who comes from the center of government or democracy was and unusual experience in those days even more unusual now to be seen in our masked world and at the time to feel like your humanity was taken into account and i think that was one of her gifts it was automatic and natural to her. It was authentic to understand others and i think she felt after certain point she felt there wasnt anybody she couldnt learn from that if she understood them carefully and on their own terms to get a sense of what they were about she will learn something take it back to an agency that might help her back to her own call in which she used to reflect those thoughts of what she had seen and others. I have an entire file called is simply noticing. That was part of the job district one description where she changed being a human being in her job was to notice people and what they were going through. So after i finish the book thank you for that. Also part of that is the word applied giant i was struck by how obligated she felt to so many people. And then she looked after the girls that were there. So was she just born for this type of service . It is amazing. I used to think of Eleanor Roosevelt of the greatest dogooder of all time. And beginning to understand her that the wish to do good and the good to appreciate peoples ideas of her father who died in such disgrace as the junkie and the drunk dragged through the mud ultimately and then afterwards by people in his own world her wish to do good and then to take the care they were giving them and get back to her and to be the kind of person that was illuminating or enlightening to have a sense of awakening and that became her transaction and the way she connected. So was she introspective and the service that you are talking about. And the willingness to be tolerant that she first worked on to understand and accepting the parts of herself that she cannot go and others was the acceptance that allowed her to be tolerant and tolerant of herself first it was a battle, it was a struggle that she concord. She had to conquer one of her feelings she didnt have the broad range come as a child she was actually shut down and was told to go into the bathroom and hang her head of the bathtub cry it out all by herself into the tub, please not anywhere else. She was very constrained and learning how to respond to people who her surely new to soccer turn to the wall and turned it on herself and that was very much a part of the responses and the transcendence to become the independent woman she became stepbystep. One of the reasons i felt the roosevelt marriage worked out as a partnership in the long run that she had learned early how to befriend somebody not so much lucy mercer who was a rival but later people who came to help frank when he became a part of their lives and replaced her almost as a servant. Many of the people who attend our author talks how authors do their work. And with very similar names. With a list of characters especially the nicknames. Can you tell us how you manage your research. But the trick was that each person of color so franklin was always blew every blue index card will always be england every green is eleanor and red is mama or theater was about. Yellow is any woman or any man eleanor one of what it is a love interest. Those are miraculously useful and helpful in the beginning. And the purples are franklin and eleanor people. And folders in chronological. And when i was doing a profile on him every single thing was complicated information and gathering the internet and much of the work was global and to file everything chronologically so to get a piece of information if you duplicate chronologically into that file so you remember a better starting in 1884 whatever your of eleanors life and often and that way you discover the two things you the next to each other reveal something that is quite often the case bumping up against each other with information that wasnt there in the first place. The first answer to the question is index cards. I have to have in my hand in the beginning before it goes into the great digital soup. I have a space in their because of my mother but i know i will end up in a digital Rolling Stones concert. [laughter] that sounds like fun. I was fortunate in my early publishing career to work for that can off and he would do the same thing with the chronology of everything every letter he wrote went into a folder after years and years of chronological folders. And then would say give me 1990. And every person and get the file. Its very important to keep each of them separate. One thing i delighted to keep those gilded age families and you talked about the roosevelt marriage and then the hyde park roosevelts with the Hudson Valley and that adolph all eleanors mother they hung out in new york with other high society it was and in many ways Eleanor Roosevelts new book but she is a new york girl and moves among new york and as much as she tries to get away from that gilded age but then the vanderbilts and then fdr went and got a library and those that come back into their lives. They are very much the ones in charge at that point. Pulled the part that ended up on the cutting room floor and thank you ellie parker again who help me cut that out but the city born into like now it actually polaroid is one polarized unimaginable poverty. And at the catholic garden and then to finally transcend also to be very committed to reshaping so many of the things that were reforms and the reforms of the new deal to help save people that didnt have representation and then to bring i. C. E. And to bring services to do their bidding politically and you would vote the way they told you to vote because they brought you i. C. E. For your icebox or what you something. And then ultimately came to represent the government and then to give everybody equal measure with the American Dream and the prosperity created with all of that wealth to overtake the family. With bits and pieces of that the stature of the 11 eleanor was about in washington dc with the new roosevelt monument and eleanor was deliberately shown in that statue without first. She wore furs everywhere and carried her handbag everywhere she always had something her courtesies were the courtesy of a civilized woman of her class and time she was who she was. And it was a trial for her and others she never became uncomfortable to being a woman of her time and place. Thats a wonderful answer. The question that i have is the amalgam of others but covering the first year i was struck how similar that many of the conditions right now limited federal aid. They are very similar so what did you learn from eleanor and how she reacted. Theres too good answers but off the top of my head she made listening part of the Job Description it was very deep and sincere and profound listening to a somebody was thinking and how that might affect the other people in their lives. She was like a doctor and in the old days used to make diagrams for the rest of the family and then to be inherited because she was a diagnostician and was wide open and what you have to say. And with the ability to listen to the most important thing today. The other part hatred is upon us and has been for a while entity people by surprise and in the public life as a woman but in particular is a first lady and was reviled because people realized in the south where jim crow was in the ascendancy and the kkk put a bounty on her head she experienced the hatred that you heard during the obama years because now it is out in the street. Her ability to let that go and never react directly to find a way around for over or under , or sometimes through, she was never committed to making her point to be the point that stuck. She was always moving past that and movement itself moving forward and letting go is what she did most often people get stuck. Was eleanor a college grad . And who influenced eleanor the most . I would love you to talk about her remarkable education and also fdr approach the both of them greatly formed by the education tell us more eleanor was told by her grandmother she would go to college she would never attract a man it was that thinking the point of college was to get your mr s degree or a few more fine tunings of a debutante. Women did not go to college they refuted in eleanors generation we saw lawyers ultimately and they did go to college but not the women she came of age with she went to boarding school in england at her aunt the sister of theodore became the it girl under a charismatic frenchwoman who is progressive and her politics who emphasized one thing that a woman needed to learn to think for herself and was thought to be harmful potentially the young woman might get ideas and you might need to send her away to someplace if she are too carried away. This was almost radical and with the aristocracy. And those that were not being told to say much of anything and to speak their minds to carry an argument through and to defend their part of the argument that skills today are natural to a sixth grader were denied then for women 15 and over she stayed and became the favorite and as an assistant professor role and to teach younger girls with responsibilities and she was what she became her whole life which was the intermediary going between the authority and others and offended various classmates and she took education as a gift and what she learned, she brought back one of the things she learned she blamed herself for later that the high standards , she had to learn at the table of the school how to converse with a grown up on subjects she knew nothing about. She will listen to what word be said picking up of the details then coming back with that later in the conversation now if she knew better or more than she did. It is not bs thing as we would call it today but it is the way to project herself that she learned later to curtail and then went back to the books later and i will learn from the ground up and not take this more diplomatic version. She went back to the United States in 19 oh one and was subjected by her grandmother with a whole range of debutantes with those rituals and rights because her own parents her mother had died her mother was in the ascendancy in new york society she had lost her father in a scandalous way so every room she went into the woods a poor daughter or and a roosevelts less attractive daughter. It was a public shaming and they were all geared toward the matrons playing catch and spend to be involved of the dangerous liaisons with the age of innocence tribal rituals and was such an outsider in her own life created the great theme of do i belong and mi connected so when she met franklin she discovered another outsider because as an oddball he came from hudson river with a quite magnificent childhood it was isolated. And then to catch up in the world he was considered an outsider. Weber charismatic in a different way to be quite dynamic and magnetic but at that time they were both the outsider that was part of the earliest attraction. Now to talk about her influence it is reading in the book but also the cast of characters there was in her life when she was an orphan that if youve ever seen the magnificent emersons about a family like them it was magnificent now falling down with industrialism and the new world overtakes it but she lives in the house as an orphan on the hudson river with an empire and it works great out of the magnificent emersons and had these aunt and uncles falling down the uncles were astonishingly tennis champions of their day when im on tennis was just starting and the dazzling beauties of the moment. Valentine . And valentine junior and uncle valley was an amateur actor when uncle valley and uncle eddie won the doubles championship on the east coast 1880 they then moved on to the National Championship several years later but the house was full of their trophies and it was an old and passing glory and eleanor were jean and responsible from alcoholic and out of control it was not a gothic or horrifying orphan but she saw people falling apart with the proxy trustee. She was the one who showed up in court and at the Police Station with the uncle one more time had went on a bender in new york at the tenderloin district and showed up at the station house. And the officer was calling and saying someone has to come get them out of here. And later in her life he was still carrying on and uncle eddie shimmers very loyal to the aunts and uncles the ants did better but it was the beginning they were not displaced people but they were displaced people didnt know where to go ultimately and it was eleanors job to take care of them. She buried each of them and saw them through terrible tragedies and took care of their children and pay tuition. The number of people and things she would be writing checks for in her adult life and the christmas list and the number of individuals with a sense of responsibility to was extraordinary and that was personal when alone who that applied to in her political world. We are getting close to the and do you want to ask the main question then we will go to the final . You go with one more than i will do the final. With eleanor after eleanor do you have any comments . Keep talking i have to look for this really quickly. You might be surprised how many people made that comment. I am eleanor because of eleanor. Hold on. Another comment. I keep almanacs. On certain things i began keeping an almanac of the things that were named for her or after her and here it goes a road, mid season peony , amber tipped calla lily, clock, cake, strawberry, lily, clock, cake, strawberry, f in a rodeo ten dollars to anyone who could ride Eleanor Roosevelt for two seconds. Shade of blue, phantom conspiracy, eleanor club, spaghetti strap wedding gown, a rock chick in a milwaukee restaurant, innumerable vocational schools and public schools, college and university of california san diego, honorary chapter of kappa delta pi, multiple College Buildings including what i was a college, world war ii warplanes, and countless newborns anna and eleanor and blake, the american pot music singer, the writer of dirty dancing awards and fellowship fellowships, 200acre tract of land 3 miles from san juan puerto rico. Homesteading town in pennsylvania, a son downtown in west virginia, a lake in Yosemite National park that she would stop with rainbow trout, urban housing projects golf course hazards including bunkers especially the 368yard poll in a suburban Chicago Country Club in the fourth hole in new york called eleanors teeth where the bunkers were spread out and oclock i think i mentioned that but because it is always on the go spirit that is my naming almanac of eleanor. That list will probably grow. Was to the last question which again is many have been is a combination of questions coming in from people that is was eleanor appreciated by the public during her lifetime or was there a great impact only realized after her death . In the second half of that is is a legacy still relevant in todays world . I think there is so much pain in the world right now that eleanor is a figure now because she person that saw pain in others and try to heal it she had the ability to do that. So i think her legacy today , her ability to look into you for you to see that connection sadly we cannot do that in real time anymore is still there for people with when they connect to her and her spirit which is global because its about seeing the humanity and somebody else so i think when she wears a live she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times but never given it. As a creator and the chairman and the supervisor of the universal declaration of human rights, and document that attempts to bring basic rights to people in all nations across the globe to serve as an instrument for those rights going forward, she should have been awarded that honor. But her life was so full of honors i think it mattered to do it never took place. She would be the first to say it was for her husbands policies. In her lifetime she communicated love and admiration to her in Public People stopped her frequently on the street and she connected frequently with people she always gave it over to Franklin D Roosevelt as president of the United States and great war leader who did not see the end of the war gave her the endless decades of widowhood to sidestep whatever attention was brought to her to say she was carrying out her husbands legacy. That was not true. She would deflect when she needed to. I think what she wanted always was a connection and belonging and love. I think she found that in part but never fully and her struggles with that in the ability to finally see herself whole manifested at the very end of her life where i think she accepted what she had done was enough and in her final struggles with tuberculosis , she could say its just not who i am to languish in the infrared world i would rather go now. I think in recognizing that she had done what she was put on earth to do. She expressed, my favorite monument but arthurs passengers gravestone appears there is a bowtie on the grave there are two stones and his stone says Something Like best of love in her says she tried i think eleanor tried. I think she tried and she succeeded she loved and was loved. Finding that from herself primarily was a great struggle. But today even just to flow through the Digital World of those quotes and inspiration even by saying known to make you inferior without your consent the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams and these are brought forward like the times we are living in when authority is confused how to bring people into the process they are alienated from. The goal of the great legacy is that government does belong to and you have a role to play not just giving to you but you need to step up please and vote. Thank you. I loved Eleanor Roosevelt my entire life and now i love her even more. Thank you for that. I think david will come back on. Thank you both so much. I went to extend my thanks to all three of you for coming up with those good questions and im sorry we didnt get to the ones we talked about im sure weve been happy talking for a long time and thank you for giving us this work of scholarship and archival work and any of us around our age or older or younger than us she remains the quintessential first lady if you think of what the president spouse should be like when you measure up against Eleanor Roosevelt i think this book makes it clear why she got to that place and i appreciate the insight what history can tell us for the times we are in now going in 100 years after her husbands presidency i will remind everyone again the book will be signed by david thank you again im sorry some people had a problem with the platform this is wonderful thank you for joining us. Between donad steve bannon who would become a strategist in his