Thanks so much for joining us for this joint effort between the american Inspiration Series of american ancestors at New England Historical genealogical society, the state library of massachusetts and as, Porter Square books. Although we are open on light and a person, with limited capacity. We ship into local delivery and have curbside pickups. A special pandemic newsletter and lots of other stuff such as a visit us at Porter Square books. Com. Before introduce our guests and our moderator i want to give you a few quick housekeeping notes but using crowd casts which so much my views before before and maybe many of you have it. First of all the that is recorded so you can watch it back if you wasted for part of the knights talk because your water was boiling or you wanted to share with a friend. It will be here at this crowd cast link as well as on our facebook page. Second of all you can really use this lovely chat window in the bottom right of your screen whats that Say Something nice. Please do. Type in and say hi. People of been using the chat a ton telling us where youre coming from, although the place it appears. Of course it almost goes that same keep it respectful and we will reserve the right to remove anyone who doesnt meet that standard which im sure will be unnecessary. And right next to that little chat box at the bottom you can see the words asked the question. Question. You can type it in there. Chat any questions for david and we will have some time for at the end of the that to look at those. The event is live stream on facebook. So just so you know we cant see your questions on facebook. If you want to participate you have to come join us on crowd cast. You will see a button at the bottom of your browser to buy the book from us and to our partnership. Were delighted to offer Free Shipping when you order through that link and david is providing us with side bookplates that you get what in pandemic land passes for a signed book. In the moment ill turn it over to Margaret Talcott and death care rx. And david. David is a producer of the literary program. That is ahead of special Collection State Library massachusetts and she will tell you better shrine. David is a local boy. Hes the author of awardwinning biographies of Charles Schultz and i have no doubt this book will add to his list of awards. Yes, david is also a fellow alumnus of margaret and mike at the wall street journal called his book super. The New York Times says it is a terrific resource. I will take my own personal connection with Eleanor Roosevelt, which is when my mom was in junior high in the late 40s mrs. Roosevelt came to visit her school in the bronx and my mother was the student chosen to escort her through the auditorium to the stage and an experience my mother actually talked about for the rest of her life. Please without further ado join me in welcoming margaret and beth and david. David, thank you. You just actually proved the point that it wanted to make your to start this wonderful evening, and thank you so much for having me. Everybody it turns out has some connection to Eleanor Roosevelt i grew up in cambridge where users were aware that George Washington had been on the comment and George Washington slept here. You go around the country and George Washington slept it was always a sort of joke of the 30s. Its not just eleanor slept too. Alinda registered deeply on every Single Person she met. Those memories just as your mother was more lifelong instead with people. I grew up in houston which i thought she was related to be. I thought i was related come i thought she was a little kid. Through such a sense of a presence. The reason was because my mother worked for Eleanor Roosevelt at wpg age. Wb gh was then in its infancy, Public Television was in its infancy, National Education television was the primitive version where in this story one half generation away from or actuly maybe for five years away from another very tall, powerful woman arriving in pionee fashion on Educational Television and julia childs from cambridge, massachusetts. But right now, thi was 1959, Eleanor Roosevelt decided she would have a one hour per month seminar like show that would be filled at brandeis and braeis was a place that she could a great deal about that she was o th board. The auditorium was a perfect primitive tv studio and the right cables and plywood platforms running all thrghout andhe theater part of the auditorium, and the show we shot there, my mother shall be secluded every month to new york to prepare the script with mrs. Roosevelt and to pick from her closet one of five identical not particularly broad waiflikek dresses, more like washday dresse she was very simple in her presentation on the show, and my moths job was to pick which addres would be this month to go over this scripted she had prepared with paul noble, the other producer and henry morgenthau, executive producer. In this time i was about four years old when he went one day to the studio and remember, it is among my very earliest memories, the impression i had was an extremely, of a gntess tually. Emotion walking down a corridor and acrs cables, and all i rememberas somehow i was able to set my foot in one spot and another innother spot, and move towards this figure and say two words, juicy fruit. She looked down at me and clearly was fresh outf juicy fruit, at no stick of juicy fruit. But s had for me to think ship fo people who she met in this y. Her eyes beame out like as if there wasight from within. Her smi was brought and she was full of a sort of sdonic almost mirth i think i a jump asking for a stickf gum, and expecting it. I think that was the main thing. Sh very kindly told me she didnt have gum. I dont remember what else she said. Theemory is of a sense that i was very close to goodness, tt goodness was point out of the human being in the form of light. This happed to me one or two other times in my life. One very movingly when Nelson Mandela came up broadway soon after his relea from prison and his wife and t United States. I by chance the myself dntown and as i walked toward broadway realizing something was haening, just as i arrived at broadway that was mandela in a bubble car in the parade, and his glance fel to the left of me but i felt that i could see that was the same phenomenon of goodness, of goodness appearing as light. I thought once in an artisthen he was looking at something, the same kind of attenti when it was given as pure, a sort of yourttention, a pure love of the subje, the same thing happened. Strangely, what connected the ba to mrs. Roosevelt and what began this book for me was an odd coincence that i only realized se of the coincidence later, but aund 2001 i was given access to a basement on madison avenue, and to go down into the basement underneath an Office Building to look for the recosrom 1950 of the beginning of peanuts can of the penis cartoon strip that Charles Schultz, a yng cartoonist from minnesota had been trying for number of years to get his cartoon started and United Feature Syndicate was the worldwide,xcuse me, International Syndicate that schultz was accepted by and h papers were down tre and as i found schultz at the as part, there to the right, the our alphabetical bankers boxes and the firstne i saw to my left was roosevelt my day. I just picked up the lid and a sort of magical dust flew into the air as i lifted out a long gall in the first our member the first description i had an impression that Eleanor Roosevelt had written a column. I did know anything about it moment,nd so as i i begin reading the description of star light from a sleeping porchn a fall morning, early fall morning, and the great pefulness that this site of a morningstar from mrs. Osevelt sleeping porch brought into thi we will break away from this program briefly to keep her over for your commitment to congressional covage. We willeturn to thi iust a couple of minutes. The senate isbout to meet for a quick pro forma session with no vote expected. Now life to the floor of the u. S. Senate here on cspan2 washington, d. C. , novemb 24, 2020. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable ben sasse, a senator from the statof nebraska, to perform the duties of thchair. Signed chuck grassley, president pro tempore. E presiding officer under the previous order, the Senate Stands adjourned until 3 15 p. M. Stands adjourned until 3 15 p. M. Senators meet next electricity worked on november 30 at 3 p. M. Eastern. Lawmakers are expected to continue working on judicial nominations at that time. Live u. S. Senate coverage is here on cspan2. Cspan2. We returned to our booktv programming already in progress. Back to cambridge briefly. I wanted to say before he turned over to market and beth and we continue our conversation i want to give a shout out to everybody at Porter Square books and to david, thank you. I would give a shout to one of your neighbors, digital and otherwise, my great assistant Eleanor Parker and i want to shout out also my train commuting buddy who is a poet who i grew up in cambridge, mass. , and she and i used to run for the train at order square that went out to concord and back. It was always, we are always a bit kind of odd jumping onto the United StatesPorter Square. There were few people that certified or oddball miss and a cambridge nist that we were taking citrate from Porter Square to concord no one else really was doing that. It was a david and Porter Square remains an outer limits strength in my childhood. That was very far away from life as i i sort of knew it early o. I begins to its always a a very romantic and literary highly literary locus that im so proud to be at tonight. That was fascinating. I love your connection to boston. Yo are very much a new york person now i understand but they cambridge diehard in all of us. It was fascinating to hear, i have not appreciated your thorough connection to wgbh, partner of oursn this series that we do. As i said im margare and we do have a lot the partners but one of my favorite is Porter Square oks so itseally a thrill to be within with interne and wite state library. As many of you know, wedd american ancesto run the series american inspiration. I cant think of a bter person to be part of this series tha eleanor rooselt. She and her family, tr, fdr, or such looming leaked figures in american history. And eleanor parcularly such an inspiration. Paicularly at this time f inclusion, diversity for our great country. She is such role model and truly inspiring. One particularly big fan of Eleanor Roosevelt is my copartner tonight, Beth Carroll Horrocks of the state library of massachusetts. That come tell u about yr phantom get why did you start f withhe first question . Great. First let me apologize for being a little late to join you. My computer shutdow i am as carolearts come head of state library. Right inhe massachetts state house in downtown bosto and we are repository ofassachusetts documents and publications and many oth things related to massachusetts history. Were glad to be part of this group night. Margaret and i have written some questions for dav and was also mpiled questions that came from people when they registered and thin we will be watching for questions that come inuring the talk tonight. Im going to start with one question that is mostlyine because i am a huge f of eleanors. It also incdes that came in from other people. Here is my first question. My favorite line in t whole book, and there were many, many, ny favorite lines, was right after the dedication pagut before the table of contents, and its a quote from eleanor that says i felt oblig to notice everything. And to me that sentence can ply to everything that happened to her in the book and everything tha shaped her life. I wonred if you could give us some context for that quote and tell us if you agree with my thoughts about i. I am so touched by your thoughts about it because thats exactly, is at the graph, what a help that sound almost as if an overture to life epigraph. I used to listen to appellation spring when i begin work, and at some of the sound i thought o eleanors great expansion from her own life, herwn personal life to the life of the country andeing part of the whole country. I think her abilityo notice her le began which is very good young and it was i think something of a survival mechanism, coping mechanism when she was yng. It became something that almos was shocked how many people left records of feeling her aost steering sometimes at then, looking soarefully. Sometimes when she did think soone was noticing her, she would look very carefully at then i dont think she missed the thing and i think in one of democracies great principles which is reciprocity which is everybody counts and everybody life and feelings, life and rights are equally judged and equally taken into account. I think eleanors noticing was alsoxtremely democratic and equal opportunity ands far reaching and parsing. Onef the things everybody who did meet her or who came into contact with h felt about her, they felt seen. I think being seen by someo who comes from the center of the vernment or the center of democracy or the center of even just whington d. C. Was a very unusual experienc in those days. It would be evenore unusual now to really feel that seen in our mass world, and are pain. I think to be glimpsed by mebody like Eleanor Roosevelt at the time was to feel as if youre very humanity have been take into account and recognize. That was o of her gifts was at with automatic and natural to her. It was nothing, you couldnt fake it. It was ahentic, and authentic wish to understand others. I think she felt quite, after certain pointhe felt the wasnt anybody she could learn from, that evebody she met with somebody whom if she understood them carefully and on their own terms and aga to get a sense of what they were about, she would learn something and taket back, sometimes back to the the president , sometimes back to th president , back to some agencyhat might help, since it back to her own column which used to reflect those thoughts and things she had seen in others. So the noticing was, i have an entire file called simply noticing because it was part of the job desiption where she changed what being first lady was somewhat she chang being a human being was. Her job was t notice people and to notice what they were really going through. Great. The phrase, the quote means even more to me after finish the book then when i first started, so thank you for that. Margar . Also part of that since is the word obliged. I was very struck by how obligated she felt to so many people throu her lif starting with her father, she developed fundamental capacity to obligednd to live subject of the peoples contr. In her teen years in a boarding school in england she looked after, she looked after the girls that with there. She looked after her young brother endlessly and that she looked after fdr. She had a very hd to please motherinlaw and is lot of stepping back and obliging that she did. Was she just born for this type of service . Its amazing. Yes, i think that her i used to think ofleanor roosevelt when i was youngers perhaps the greatest dooder of all time, lets sayome for a sort of dogooder quality about it. What begin to appear more subtly to me as i was beginning research and begin to understand her was that the wish to do good and be good was come had a great al to do with neeng to reshape people against about her father who had died in such disgrace as a draw, as a jkie, someone who is absolutely draggedhrough the mud ultimately in his final years and tt afterwards by people in his ownorld and by people that sh then came across. I think her wish to do good became something that translate into and need to be useful. She could be useful she felt she could be loved, someone would take the care that she was giving them and give bk to her. It became a nation for her a mission to be the kind of person whose usefulness was illumiting or enlhtening it would open somebody up or almost create a sense of awakening. That never stoed for her and it just became her transaction, th way she connected. Weve got a number of questions about why she whispered certainhings. Fdr infidelity, when she and introspective . In this service youre talki about, ds t capacity to forbade her . I think a willingness to be tolerant became something she first worked on to understand yourself and fin excepting the parts of yourself that she knew she couldot fulfill in others wa an acceptance that allowed her to be tolerant and to be tolerant of yrself first and then others. Itas a battle, struggle but i thinkhe conquered. She had to conquer one of her feelings failings she understood himself was she didnt have a broad range come she was allowed to express anger. As a cld she was aolutely shut down. If she had a resenent, it she had even a mile people let alone fullblown come with the right to be fullblown angry,he was told to go into the bathroom, hangar i over the bathtub and cry it out all by herself and into theub, please, not anywhere else. She was very, very constrained. I think learning how to respond to people who had hurt her come she first and only to turn to the wall and the serus to something turn on herself and at kind of self immolation was very mh a part of her early responses. It the transcendence of that that allowed her to finally become obviously the indepdent woman she later became in step by step by step. One of the reasons i felt the roosevelt marriage did work out in the lon run as a partnership was that she had learned early how to befriend somebody who for instance, in the case not so much lucy mercer was arrival, it was not so much they would be friends but later people who came to help franklin and be part of their lives. And replaced or almost a a circui with franklin. She learned to love and tolert and become part of family and part of their sort of parallelize. Thank you. Kay. Manyf the people who attend our author talks are very interested in how authors do their work. This part if he seemed toe like it had a cast of tusands, many with very similar names. Thank you, by the way, for that list of character at the beginning of the book. I was very, very helpful, especially the nicknames. Good. So could y tell us how you managed your research and especially keep soany details so well documented . Im asking this partly as a librarian. Theres a couple of tricks and a couple of real big fails, but the trick was unlrned with my continued ever since. I get each person i color so that franklin was always blue. Everyone index card is going to be franklin. Evergreen index card is eleanor. Every r index card is mama or a theater roseville, tr himself or you do reville or cousin. Yellow is any woman elean fell in love with for any man eleanor fell in love with. Its a love interest. I dont know why yellow but it worked. White is quotations other sources that nds to be saved. Quite index card. Those are miraculously useful and helpful in terms of keeping ings straight at the beginning. U can expand the colors. Fornstance, missy who was eleanor delicate with ccuit with frankli purple for people who are eleanor and franklin people. Betweens. And folrs all in chronological order. The main principle i learned it from buckminster fulr years ago when was doing a profile on him about his friendship, every single thi that came into his life, it was a complicated life full of information gathering, preinteet, he thought globally a much of his work was global, he realized the only way to kee things straight was to file everything chronogically. I realized every time you get a piec of Information Company could you put it chronologically into a chronological fil of where it came into your own life, 2010, 2011, 2012, you remember it better. Also went into chronicle logical file of eleanors that starts in 1884 but also even earlier chronological i would put things in her life where the happened. Often in that way when you g back you discover to think you put next to each other suddenly reveal something. Its quite often the case, there are surprised something ups ainst each other of information that wasnt there in the first place. Great. The first answer is index cards, right . I have to have it in my hand in the beginning. It does come into the great digital soup. I have stays in my office becae my mother but i know i ll end up in a digitalolling stones concert. Thats were some of my spirit is going to endlessly, you kno be aife. That sounds like fun. Mount auburn is fun. I love mount auburn. I was fortunate in my early publishing career to work for alfr a knopf junior, and pat would d the same thing with chronology he kept a chronology of everything and as his administrative person, every letter he wrote when int a folder tha which was chronological and yet yrs and years of chronological folders. All the literacy ever wrote to all these fous people. He would say please give me 1990, please give me yeah. And every person gets a file and that becomes its own, it has its own subfiles and thats why the people, its very importanto keep them, each of them sarate and very clear. One thi delighted and rrified in doing in reading your book w trying to keep all th gilded age families in order. You talk about the roosevelts, their marriage. With fdr and eleanor being t merging of the oyster bay roosevelt and hyde park rooselt to come from the quote still futile Hudson Valley. At the family up on the Hudson Valley were remarkable collection of land and gentry. Eleanors mother was emergency [inaudible] and halls. They hg out in new yorkith other high society source. Its an endless, a amazing coection ofames of new york. In many ways i think ofleanor roosevelt, your book i sort of a portrait o new york. Of course it goes down to washington but it a new york, she is a new york girl and she moves among new york. As much as she tries to get away from that gilded age she is stuck in brownstone society. And then vanderbilts keep her motherinlaw said the vanderbilts might dorce and so might but we do not. Fdr went andot a library, and asked astor size lrary he shipped home from your. Thes names in history come back into the lives. They are very much the ones in charge, mrs. Astor a astor in general with a slighy older version of great wealth that was riking about new york and im ad you saw the portrait, it is portrait of the sudan so much left on the cutting room floor. It was a city, the city she was born into a city very much like were in n, city absolutely porized between unimaginable weal and unimaginable poverty. Asach new wave of immigrants arrived at cholic garden and came into the cityome the world eleanor was going to finally transcend was also t world she is going to be i some ways very committed to rhaping and saving. So many of the things that were reformed that al smith and then eleanor herself and franklin and the reforms of the new deal were reformed that help save people who are sick in that city, who didnt have representation. You got off the vote, the guys from tammany hall came over and started bringing you ice and started bringingou services so you would do her bidding politically. You would vote the wayhey told you to vote because they brought you ice portable icebox for the projt something. Eleanor and franklinegan, came to ultimate represent the govement that replace that corrupt machine city of boston and people come and give you special favors, to give everybodyqual measu in the American Dream but ao essentially the prosperity prot was created that overtook families like eleanors. They were old new york and she was some old new york and she actually ihink kept bits and pieces of all the offer life. It was strange to me and sad that where you saw the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt in the great roosevelt monument in washington, d. C. Next to the reflecting, next to the final days the new roosevelt monument of the 2000s come late 90s i guess. Eleanor was deliberately shown in that statute without first. She wore first adored. She carried her handbag ever. She arrived with violence fictionalize it something. Her courtesies with a courtesy of a civilized woman of her class andime. She never gave those up and she didnt ever worry about being identified or labeled accordingly. She sply was who she was, and that kind of freedom i think is, was a triumph for her. It allowed her to be herself anyways i think of the people like her we uncomfortable with. She never became uncomrtable with being a woman of her tim in place. Thats a wonderful answer. O more before we take off on the rump of other questions . Okay. The question i have actually is amalgam ofome of the peoples as well that have come in already. In the section that covers the first years after fdrs election to the presidency, i was struck by how silar, and this is something you mentioned a minute ago, how many of the conditions we are going through right now, financial crisis, losing homes, mited federal aid, president ial election, climate disaster, many more things, they are very similar to what we are ing through now. The question is, how can we use what you learn from eleanor and how she reacted all these things to help us to these times that we are goinghrough now . There are two good answers off theop of my head. One is she me listening part of the job descripon of first lady. Her ltening was very deep, always since, it was a profou listening to what somebody really was thinking and how that might affect the of the people in life. She was like doctor, the we shou listen. She listened with her back leing forward, docto in the old days used to make diagrams of the rest o the family to understand what kind of illnesses you might have inherite when they were diagnosing. She was a diagnostician as she listened and she was widepen to what you had to say. Without question the ability to listen is the most important thing tay, that she would say i think. The other part is hatred is upon us and has been upon us nowor a while, in a plic way, in a way that was unleashed and it takes people by surprise. Eleanor, it took me by surprise and sck to me to find the kind of hatred she was subjected to enter public life, starting in in a public life ae woma but particularly a public life as a first lady. She was absolutely reved because people realized especial in the south where jim crow was in the ascendancy and ku klux klan put a bnty on her head at one point. She expernced the kind of hatred that you heard a bit about and heard during the obama years but that is not out in the streetnd i was part of discours and part of daily life. Ability to lethat go, to never react directly, to find a way around or away over and away under come setimes through, but i think she was never committedo winning. She was never committed to making her point be the point that stuck. She was always moving past that and i think movent itself and letting go,oving forward and letting go with the two things she did most often and that y dont seeuch of, enough of now. I think people get stuck. Thank you. Margaret, we are going to turn to some qstions that came in from our viewers, right . I gatheredhrough them together that were sent in early and i will get through all three of them and add to the myself. Was eleanor aollege grad . What was h Early Education . And who influenced eleor the most wax and would love you to talk about how remarble experience of education, david. Also fdrs approach to education. He was clearly hunted by doctor peabody and gron school, in a good way but both of them lately formed by the education. Tell us more. Eleanor was told byer grandmother that if she were to go to college she would never attrt a a man. It was tha world of thinking the point of college was to get your mr s degree. And or simply a few more find tunings of the debutante, if at all. But women did go to college in heclass. They were not encouraged to. Ve f did in eleanors generation, although you see law school, there were lawyers ultimately from our generation and women did go to college but not the wom that she came of age with. Sh went to a boarding school in england at her aunt, her roosevelt and, the sister theodore, had gone and become the it girl of that era under madams of this, a charismat frenchwoman who w progressive in her politics butho emphasize one thing above all other which is that a women needed to learn to think for herself. Women the i idea of educatin at the time eleanor was there was thought to actually be harmful attention to Womens Health come to a you woman might get a district she might get influenced by tngs she might come you might need to send a way to seplace if she got too carried away with this education stuff. This was almost radical in the sense that she was taking the end women other than aristocracy bo international, arican but particularly International Girls who were noteing told at home to think for themselves or to say much of anything. She told them not only must they think for the supplement to speak the minds and to carry an argument through and to defend their part of the argument. Skil that today i think our natural, natural to a sixth grader, were tonig and disapproved of them for yng women 15 and over. Eleanor when a 15 she stayed with madison has who come whose favorite she became enough of a sense of position almost sort of a graduate student. The sort of almost an assista pressor role where she had things to teach younger girls. She had resnsibilities. She was what she became all the life which was intermediary, going between the authority and others. She defended variouslassmates against and defended madam to her classmates. She took education as a gift. What she learned, she brought back templateor whole life. When she looked him she blamed hersel for later, which was madame soustre high status to click come shared to learn at the table athe school how to converse with grown up on subjects that she knew nothing about the thatas a matter of listening to what was being said, picking up details and then coming back with the later in the conveation as if she now knew better oro more than she really did. Its not exactly bs as we would call it today or, but it was a way of ptecting things, projecting herself that she learned later to curtail. She then went back to the books later on and said im going to learn from the groundp and not just simply take this sort of more diplomatic version. She went back to the United States in 11 and unfortunate was subjected to byer grandmother to a whole range of debutante coming out and society girl ruals and rights that was horrific to her in large par because her own parents, she wasnt orphaned by then. Her parents had died. Her mother h been in the ascendancy socially among come in new york society. She had lost her father in this scanlous way. So every room she went into shoes whispered about eithers Elliott Roosevelt for daughter, less attractive daughte they would say. She was shame. It was a public shaming and also the ritualsf that world were really all geared towards the matrons and were going to play the game of catch and spend, and be involved in all that dangerous liaisons and Edith Wharton age of innocence kind of rituals, tribal rituals and rights. She was such an outsider, and her own life have now created i think the great sne of do i belong, and am i connected, and what do i fit in so when she met franklin she discovered another outsider and oddball because although franklin came from t roosevelts of hyde park a of the hudson river and thatived quite magnificent childhood there, it was still princely isated childhood. He was an only child and his mother standing to Groton School late, meaning he lt three years that his peers at overhead bonding at that very able score. The world he then had to catch up and was a world where he was considered an outsider. When they met, i aays thought of the meeting of the oddballs because theyere cousins but they were both odd in their come among their peers. They were charismatic each of them in the different ways and could be quite dynamic and magnetic, butn the world at that time he would both the outsider. That was pt of the earliest attraction. Thank you. I i was gng to say about her influence. Its in the region in the book but ao needs the cast of characters. There were in her life when she was an orphan these ants and uncles, the halls in this grant if you ever seen magnificent ambersons a story about a family like theall thatow with magnificent come now falling debt as industrialismnd the new wor overtakes it, but she livedn this house as an orphan on the hudson river that looks with an empire, it looks as if its right o of the magnifent and had in it these ants and uncles who were falling down. The uncles wer quite astonishingly the tnis champions of the day. When montanus was just starting and they were the earliest champions. The ants with the dabbling beties of the moment in all the magazines and then valentine, weren they . Lentine junior and senior. And uncle valley was an amateur actor. Andhen uncle valley and uncle eddie won the doubles championship on the east coast in 1880 fit in the gone to the National Championship several years later i 1880 i think they were double chaions. The house was full of their trophies. It was full of all this old but passing glory. Eleanor was theoung responsible one among a group of now quite feckless, alcoholic come o of control, quite kooky, zany, fun. It was not a gothic or horrifying ohan hood. It was more thathe saw people falling apart and she learned how to be the almost roxy trustee. She was at thene who showed up in court. She was one who showed up at the Police Station went uncle valley was one more time on a bendern new york in the tenderloin district and showed up athe stion house and the officer was on the blower calling, saying someone has got to come and get him outf he. He was the vein of eleanors life later on when she was first lady. He was still carrying on, and uncle eddie, his life also went to see. She was very loyal to those anson uncles. The answerid somewhat better than the uncles those aunts and uncles. Was the beginning of her taking what was, they were not displaced peopl but they were displaced people. They did know what to do or whe to go. It was eleanors job really to take care of them. She buried tm, each of them. She saw them through terrible tragedies. She took care of their children. She pd tuitions. She made sure everyone was the numbers of people and things eleanor would be writinghecks for in her adult life, and the christmas list, the numbers of inviduals that she was consntly, whose fate she had a sense of responsibity to was extraordinary. It was just personal, let alone all the peopleho applied in her political world. Thank you. Go ahead. Margaret, we are getting a little close to the end. You want to ask a main question and then we will do the final one . H, my gosh come there are so many questions. You go with one more and then i would do the final. Actio with people online who were named elean after eleanor. Is it common . Did you run across that . Any comments on naming eleanor . Keepalking cassette to look for this really quickl can you okay. So many people made that mment when the registered. I am eleanor because of eleanor. Its unbelievable. Ld on one one second. Anoth comment i sort ofeep almanacs and my still on course yes. We hear you. I keep almanacs and certa things. I beganeeping a almanac of the things that were named for her or after her come in here goes. A rose, i midseason pme holds its petals as if in a in a cupa amber tip calla lily, a clock, a cake, strawberry, a bowl bull n aveling wild west rodeo playing to segrega audience in the south, 10 to aone anyone who can ride Eleanor Roosevelt for two seconds. That was in aiken, south carolina, in the s. A shade of blue, a phantom conspiracy, eleanor clift. A spaghetti sap wedding down, a plymouth roc chickens at a milwaukee restaurant, innumerable publicnd vocational schools, a college and university of california san dieg and on every chapter of Kappa Delta Phi for distinguished educats. Multiple calls builders including an elegantedbrick colonial dormitories for women at rhode island state college. World war ii warplanes. Countless newborns including Anna Roosevelt lake a baby born in a in a trailer figure six, 19 dignity. The american pop music singer, eleanor greenwich or 1940. Eleanor bernstein born 1938 come right come right of the newly dirty dancing. Marrd as including a female basset hound and arran back, awards and fellowships and political science, a 200acre trac of land activation 20,003 molson san juan, puerto rico. Homesteading, pennsylvania combining the last sylble of her first and last name. I send them to town wtes west virginia. Alike in Yosemite National park e helped start with rainbow trout. You can use embassies, urban housing projects, golf course hazards, including tshaped bunkers and golf course holes especially the 368yard par four come 16th oh addis ababa Chicago Country Club and the fourth at the new yorklub which are calledleanors teeth with the bunkers were sead out. I white doll yet and clock. Think of making the clock but because its always on the go. Love that. Thats my naming almanacf eleanors. That list will probably grow. So why dont we do the last question which again as many o them have been is a combination of questions tha came in from people. And that is, was eleanor appreciated b the public during herifetime, or was a great impact only realized after her death . And the second half of that question is, is her legacies stl relevant in todays world . I think there is so much, i dont know, i think theyre so much pain in the world right now that eleanor is a feature now greater than ever because she was the person who saw paint in others and did try to heal it, and could pick a think s had the ability to do that. I think her lacy in the world today, herbility to look into you and for you to see her, that connection which sadly, were not able to do that in real tim anymore, is still tre for people with h when did you connec to her and to to her spit, which is globa and which became global because its universal. Its about human beings, about finding and seeing the command in somebody else and taking it to yourself. I think that when she was alive, two things happen. Its the strangeness that she was nominated for t Nobel Peace Prize several times but never given it. If anyone, creator, chairma as the supervisor of the universal declaration of human rights, a documenthat attempts to bring basic rights to people in all naons across the globe and serve as an instrument for tse rights going forward, she should have been award that honor. But our life w so full of honors. I dont think it mattered to her at all that that neverook place. I think she actually wouldve we been the first toay that she didnt come itas for her husbands policies or her carrying out of her husbands policy. In her lifetime she felt beloved i think my people. I think people, she communited their love and admiration to her in public. I think peopl stopped her frequently on the street and where she was, and she connected frequently with people. She always gave it over to frankl come her husband, franklin d roosevelt, as president of the uted states and as the great war leader who did not see the end of the war, gave her an endless decades of widowhood in which she could sidestep what attentionight be brought to her by saying she was simply carryut her husbands hed legacy. That wasnt true. She would deflect when she needed to defct i think, but i think what you wanted always was connection. What she wanted was belonging and what she wanted w love. I think that she found that in part and yetever wholly. Ihink her suggles with that and her ability to finally see herselfhole, manifested at the very end of her life where she i think accepted that what she had done was enough, and that in her final struggles with tuberculosis, she was able to say to her self its just not to languish and fade away in an invalided world. I would rather go now. I think that she and recognizing that, that she had done what you can been put on earth to do. Ihink she expssed that kind of well, my favorite monument Arthur Schlesinger is greystone now,here appears, visit bowtie ingraten the stone. There are two mex ton at mount auburn of husband and wife. His stone to something like, best beloved. Andrew stone says, she tried. I think eleanor tried. I think she tried and a think e succeeded. I think she did finally love anytng she was loved. These quotes and these ideas are active foreople and i think are brought rward by times like the ones wee living in where authority confused as to its role. As to how to help and how to brinpeople into the process that they are alienated from. Her great legacy is to say your government does belong to you, that you do have a role to play and its not just given to you, its something you need to give to and step up and vote. Thank you. After reading a book ooks is going to come back on. David, that was rlly a pleasure. I want to extend my thanks to all three of you for , to beth and margaret for coming up with such good questions and for fielding the ones on friday we didnt get to and we didnt get to talk about but im sure all of us have been talking aut for a good long time and vid to you for giving us thisremendous work of fellowship and archival work and any of our students, you and i are the samege or even younger than , she remains the quintessential first lady when you think of what a president ial spouse should be like. The one you measure up against. And i think that this book makes clear why she got to that place and i appreciate your insights into what history might be able to ll us about the times were in now, going on under these events at the beginning of her husbands presidency. I remi everyone again that if you cck on the bottom the book will be signed by david and thanks everyone again, im sorry some people have to come to the platform t this is wonderful and thanksall for joining us. Weeknights this week we feature book tv programs is a preview of whats available every weend on cspan2. Tonight weocus on science. First politil scientist ever stone ares numbers are objectives and explains numerous ways numbers impact our daily lives. Author David Eagleman ports the evolution of the brain and looks at the fute of Artificial Intelligence in his book lives wired the inside story of the evercnging brain. Later misha moscone heays the female brain is more susceptible dementia and alzheimers disease and the male brain. She writes research has been centered around the male brain while treatment for women gs behind. That starts tuesday at 8 pm eastern. Enjoyable tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. Book tv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Coming this weekend, saturday at 9 pm eastern former president barack obama reflects on his life and political career and his newly released memoir the promised land. Sunday at nine eastern on afterwards, Sally Hubbard and her book monopoly sucks. Devon wade and her how to take back control. Shes interviewed by bloomberg ws reporter David Mclaughlin andttend or appellate judge and law professor douglas giburg in his book our republic examines the constitution through the eyes of justice , legal scholars is and historians. Watch book tv on cspan2 this weekend and be sure to watch indepth live december 6 at noon eastern with our guest author and chair of africanamerican studies at princeton university. Stay with cspan2 for live coverage ofthe election process. Cspan your unfiltered view ofpolitics. [music] hello everyone and welcome to todays virtual Commonwealth Club program and im going to be your moderator for today. Im so excited to do this but i have a few things to announce, our beautiful wondersu