you could ask either franklin del anor roosevelt or elanor roosevelt after all the work did you on this book, what would they be? >> i think with he will anor, i would like to understand why she was unable at a certain moment in the middle of the war wh he asked her to be his wife again and stop traveling and stay home and take care of him to say yes to him. he loved her and she still loved him. why didn't you do it? he's going to die soon. for him, i'd want to understand why he couldn't share himself more fully with anyone. he was the most charming, most sparkling personality on the surface. everybody thought how warm he was. but underneath, there was such reserve in him. i would want to try to understand why that was so and why he couldn't give himself more to the people who loved him. >> what makes this book different than all the rest? >> well, i think what i want to do in this book is understand not only franklin and eleanor's relationship which is looked at in many, many cases about ut to understand the whole extended family that surrounded them in the white house. i came to an understand that two characters really both needed other people to meet the untended needs that were left over as a result of their troubles marriage. so when i came upon was a sense that the second family quarters of the white house were really like a residential hotel during these years. and there is about seven people living there, all of whom are intimate friends of franklin or eleanor. that is the part that is new and fun for me. >> if you had to ask a question of either one of them about personal relationships, that they had to do with other people, who are you interested in. >> for franklin, not lucy merser who everybody assumes is the central romantic figure in his life because she had an affair in 1918 and it almost broke up eleanor's marriage. but there is another woman that i think had an even more central role to play in his life and that was his second. she had started working for him when she was only 20 years old in 1920. she loved him all the rest of her life. she never married. and everybody in washington knew that she was really his other wife. when eleanor traveled, which she did like 200 or 250 days a year, she took rare of roosevelt. if he had a cold, she would bring in the cough medicine. if he were grumpy, she would arrange a poker game at night. she would be the one to be the hostess. she really was on a daily basis the closest person in the world to him. that's the relationship i'd like to know more about. >> you have in this book the second floor scenario and we'll get a cloers shot here on the names. why did you put this in the book? >> it seemed to me that what the reader is going to get from reading the book is a sense of what it was like 50 years ago to be in the white house. and because each of these rooms was occupied by somebody who was very important to either franklin or eleanor, closest friends and romantic friends, i wanted everybody to see how close they were to see they could wander around in the mid of the quarters and talk to each other. >> what year was this? >> 1940-45. the rooms depict the period at that time. >> can you see on the one end, you have elanor roosevelt's bedroom and right across the hall is lorena hickock. who was that and what was their relationship snt second floor of the white house. >> she had been a former reporter for the associated press. and, in fact in, 1933, she was considered the leading female reporter in the country. she weighed about 200 pounds. she smoked cigars. they played poke we are the guys and really smart. and what happened is she came to interview franklin and eleanor during the campaign in '32 and eleanor and she became really close friends. she fell in love with eleanor. and more importantly, she probably helped eleanor become the activist first lady she did. she came up to the idea of her coming up with press conferences every week. only female reporters could come. a whole generation of female journalists had to get their start. she was the one that came up with the idea of a syndicateded column that she wrote every day. missing only the day that her husband died. and really helped eleanor transform the role of the first lady from a ceremonial to an activist one. in the course of that, she did fall in love with eleanor. eleanor i don't think fully reciprocated it. but they were close enough friends that she wanted her living nearby. she lived in the white house the entire time during the war. >> also on this second floor schematic is -- you have a room in which harry hopkins lived in. how long did he live in there? who washe? >> harry hopkins had been roosevelt's chief new deal man in a certain sense during the 1930s. he was the head of the work progress administration. he was a social worker originally. when the war broke out in europe in may of 1940, hopkins was staying overnight that night at the white house and roosevelt decided that he wanted him nearby. he didn't want him to go home. heed intoed somebody he could talk to first thing in the morning, talk to late at night. he made hopkins the chief adviser on foreign policy. hopkins went to see churchill before roosevelt met him. went to see stallin' before roosevelt met him. unprecedented in terms -- he makes kissinger look like a mild mannered guy in terms of the kind of power that hopkins h he was incredibly loyal to roosevelt. >> how long did he live on the second floor of the white house? >> 1940-1942 when he got married. roosevelt was sad when he eventually stayed there for six months with his new wife but then she finally wanted a house of her own. >> here's another bedroom. you see mr. churchill, sarah -- >> roosevelt's mother and martha. >> that's an interesting room that room. first whenever the mother came, she wanted the guest bedroom suite. that is this room. she would come to visit and maybe once a month with her maids and servants and always being a duchess in a certain sense in the white house. princess martha came to washington during the war years from norway. her husband was the crown prince and her father-in-law was the king of norway. in fact, her son is currently the king of norway now. she was beautiful. she was long legged. r roosevelt always liked his women tall. and eleanor somehow understood that he needed that kind of companionship. she would visit on weekends and keep him company in the movies and dinners at night often again when eleanor was away. and this is her suite. but when churchill came, no one else stayed in the suite. churchill was an incredible character during this period of time. he would come and stay for like three or four weeks at a time. his habits were so exhausting that nobody else could sleep during the period of time he was there. he would awake in the morning and have wine for breakfast, scotch and soda at lunch, brandy at night, smoking cigars until 2:00 a.m. when he would finally leave after income this suite for three or four weeks, the entire white house staff would have to sleep for 72 hours in order to recuperate from churchill's visits. >> you mentioned that the relationship between the princess martha of norway and fdr was romantic. >> some of the people living in the white house at that time suggested that she was his girlfriend. there was a real flirtation between the two. i suspect that that's what the element of relationship was. it wasn't somebody he was working with. it wasn't some political partner. it wasn't an old friend and companion. it was a flirtatious relationtiarelatio relationship. whether it went beyond a sense of pleasure, i don't know. but it was that. >> you show that anna stayed in one of the rooms on the second floor. she's there in this picture in the middle. >> well, what happened is an interesting and in some ways the most moving moments of this period of time. because anna had originally been her mother's daughter. when anna was a young girl, eleanor told her the story of lucy mercer and the fact this her father had this affair with lucy long ago. over the years the two had grown so close that they wrote letters two or three times a week. they saw each other four or five teams a year even when anna lived on the other coast. but what happened is in the middle of the war, after eleanor rejected franklin's quest to stay home and be his wife again, he fwot so lonely that he asked his daughter to come and take missy's place. she had a stroke and could never speak again. that is a devastating thing for him. because he was so lonely and his mother also died just after missy's stroke, he asked anna to come and stay in the white house. then she became her father's daughter. she had long legs, tall, loved cocktails, she could gossip at night with him, all the things that eleanor never found easy to do, anna did. after a while i think eleanor began to feel displaced by her own daughter. it was a very complicated set of relationship that's developed during this time. >> where do you sflif. >> concord, massachusetts, near on main street where it all began. >> why concord? is. >> well, i think it was a compromise. i loved the city. i grew out of play outside of new york and my husband loves the country. he preferred living in maine. concord is near enough to boston that i could have my city life and near enough to country he could feel he was really living outside of the suburb, more country than suburb. >> what does your husband do? >> his name is richard goodwin. he is a writer also. just recently he's been involved in the quiz show scandal movie because the first jop after clerking for justice frankfurt was to investigate the rigged television quiz shows. he's having a great time right now. >> and did indicate the book to three people zblchl right. >> three sons. >> probably the most important people in my life. one is in his mid 20s, one is a freshman at amherst college and the youngest one, thank god, is still at home in high school. i don't want it to end. i wish they were 4, 6, 8 again. >> how many books have you written? >> three. >> what were the other two? >> first one was lyndon johnson and the american dream and that came out of the experience that i will forever treasure. i still keep thinking johnson is around. how can you do that? so that was the first book. it was great experience to try to understand that giant of a man who i found so sad and in his retirement while he was at the ranch. it's like he had nothing else left in his life once politics was taken from him. so that whole politics seered in my mind forever. then the second one is called fitzgeralds and kennedys. a three generation history of kennedy family. in fact, partly made possible given access to the private papers that had been in the attic for over 50 years. my husband was on the white house staff for john kennedy. we knew the kennedy family. one yn this book on the roosevelts means so much is that it's really first time i had to get through as an order historian without the advantage of knowing lyndon johnson or knowing the kennedy family. it's been fun. >> is there any information? the book? >> definitely. i think by choosing this period of time and experiencing on the homefront and battle front, for all the thousands of books written about world war ii, very few focus on what happened at home. most are essay kind of books. there could be very little evidence of trying to understand roosevelt's leadership, how he mobilized this democracy. i think that is the greatest contribution in a certain sense to the war. even more than the strategy of the war itself, how he got our country to produce the weapons for the war. that's what won the war. this was there for anybody to see. they're in the roosevelt library and on micro fiche. at the end of the day there is a white house usher who would record everything that happened during the day. roosevelt awakens at 7:00, has a massage at 7:15, had goes to breakfast. they record who had he lunch with and din eastern use that as a foundation. suppose he had dinner with certain people, they had diaries, i could go to the diaries to find out what he talked about at lufrnl or record that eleanor was with joe lash and i knew he had a diary. so in some ways it was like the detectives tool. it was there for anybody to see. they were not used before. the so easy and so wonderful. >> who is icies? >> the secretary of the interior. >> morgue that will. >> he's the subject of one of the favorite stories in the book. roosevelt had a annual poker game every year and held on the day that congress was going to adjourn. the rule was that whoever was ahead at the moment the speaker of the house called to adjourn would win. on one particular night, he was way ahead when the speaker calls to tell roosevelt he's add jurng at 9:30. he pretends it's someone else they're calling. they continue playing until finally at midnight roosevelt starts winning and he whispers to an aide, bring the phone to me. the aide brings the phone. mr. speaker, you're adjourning now, roosevelt wins the game. severing great and then he reads in the newspapers that congress adjourned at 9:30. he was so angry that he actually resu resigned as secretary of treasury. there was a real camaraderie among the cabinet members at the time. >> as a matter of fact, i remember somebody else resigning at one point and fdr wrote him a letter and he writes back. >> that is ickies. >> he said i got fluttery all over. >> amazing. >> he resigned several times. he would get upset about policy issues. roosevelt wrote him a very gracious letter saying you can't resign. i need you. you're so important to me. he wrote back saying when i read your letter, i got fluttery all over. i couldn't believe it. >> it says your letter, he gratefully replied makes me feel all fluttery. to have you write about me as you did is like an accolade to my spirit. he goes on. >> i know. >> i worked at the roosevelt library. and the wonderful thing, that's in hyde park, made you feel like you were going back in time. the place that was cottage looks exactly as it looked when they were there. you take a walk around the environments and you can feel you're back 50 years in times. then there were motels around the area that you say? right across from the roosevelt library. do you feel like this is what a scholar is supposed to be doing. living right at the place where your subjects live themselves. >> where is the library? >> it's in hyde park, new york. for me from concord, massachusetts, it's a 3 1/2 drive, beautiful drive. the hudson river below. the house where roosevelt was born is this beautiful house that has a great lawn that goes down to the hudson river far below. so you're surrounded by beauty while you're doing this kind of old fashioned research. >> you mention valkil. >> what happened is that's the cottage that roosevelt built for eleanor. and typical terms a cottage actually was 22 rooms. it wasn't a small little cottage. but what happened is in the 1920s after his affair with lucy mercer and they decided to stay together, it gave eleanor the freedom to go outside the marriage to find fulfillment. she became involved with a whole group of women who were activists, league of women voters, child labor laws. and sarah roosevelt always looked at these women. they would come into the house with the saddle shoes own and tweed outfits and they were not fancy people she was used to. she didn't feel comfortable bringing her women political friends to the big house where franklin and sarah lived. >> i just want to show the picture here of mrs. roosevelt the mother in the middle. >> and that's the perfect picture in the middle when franklin went to harvard, she got a down house in boston to be near him. when franklin and eleanor got married, she got two houses in new york, one for her, one for them and doors went right in between. so anyway, what happened is roosevelt seeing how uncomfortable he felt about the big house, he suggested he would build her her own could the ablg. it turned out to be a beautiful 22-room house about a mile and a half or so from the big house. it allowed eleanor for the first time in her life to have a home of her own. she loved the place. after he died, she actually lived on that place until she herself died. >> if somebody's never been to that part of the country, how far from new york city? >> a couple hours from new york city. by train it is. >> on the hudson river? >> along the hudson river. in duchess county. >> in those years in in, the war years that you're writing about here, where did the roosevelt spend their time besides the white house and hyde park? >> well, hyde park was the most important place for both of them. he went during the whole presidency something like 200 times to hyde park. so that's the most important place. >> how would he glet? >> by train. he would often get on the train in washington, maybe at 10:00 or 11:00 at night and it would reach hyde park about it morning. so he would sleep on the train. he loved traveling fwran. he had his own compartment because of his polio, he didn't like fast moving transportation. he hated airplanes. he could feel grounded on the train. eleanor was the opposite. she liked to get places fast. she only liked to travel by plane. she would go with him by train as well. >> a couple quick points. what year did he die? >> 1945. >> you remember the exact date? >> april 12th. >> and what year did he contract polio and then have to have the leg irons? >> 1921 when he was only 37 years old. he contracted polio. i think one of the things i understood more by doing this book is how much that paralysis was a part of his every day life. i like so many people in the country had assumed he conquered the polio and left a bit lame. in fact, he was a full paraplegic. he couldn't get out of bed in the morning without turning his body to the side of the bed and being helped into the wheelchair by the val et to get to the bathroom. if he leaned on the arnlz two of strong people, he could appear to be maneuvering himself forward. and i think one of my most extraordinary moments when i was doing research on the book, interviewed betsy whitney who was married to jimmy roosevelt, the roosevelt's oldest son and she asked him once, how do you fall asleep at night with all the burdens that you have to face? and as soon as he told her the answer, i knew that polio was a huge part of his imagination. he described he has his own method of counting sheep. he would imagine he was a young boy again and favorite sledding hill you behind his house which i've seen from going there that led to the hudson river far below. in the presidency as falling below, he would imagine he is a young boy getting on that sled and he said he knew every curve of the hill. when he would get the sled at the bottom of the hill, he would pick it up and run to the top and do it over and over again until he fell asleep. i thought my god this man is the most powerful man in the world yet he is imagining when he falls asleep at night and getting solace thinking he can run, sled, walk again, the very thing disease nid to him at the height of his powers at 37 years old. >> this is a little diversion. at one point you talk about when he would go from washington to hyde park, he figured out a way to stop and see her in new jersey. >> that's right. she had an estate in new jersey. he somehow -- he loved to figure out maps anyway. he loved old geography things. he figured out the railroad lines. and knew if went along a different pattern, he had to convince the secret service it was safe for him to do this he could spend an afternoon with lucy. now this was not until the last year of his life. i think some people assumed and myself included that he problem bhi had known lucy all his life. i heard about this affair back in 1918. i knew he seen her and was with her when he died. so i thought maybe it happened all the way through that period of time. but the truth was that he kept his pledge to eleanor not to see her again really until the last year of his life. after eleanor had refused to be with him and be his wife again, after anna had come back into the white house and after he was diagnosed with john jessticon j heart failure. he went there to recover and it was there that he saw lucy mercer. essentially for the first time since 1918. and she had just lost her husband who had been a very wealthy businessman come from an old family. and so she was widowed. i believe when he saw her then that what it did more than anything was to awaken in him a memory of what it was like when he was young before the polio. he had known lucy three years before his polio attack and now before his heart was giving way. he decided he wanted to see her regularly. >> how did he start the original affair with her? >> she had been a social secretary, working for eleanor. what happened is when he was assistant secretary of the navy, eleanor and franklin moved to washington in 1914. eleanor was worried about the social circle of invitations she would get. you had to know which list you belonged to go to. so she hired this young woman lucy mercer who came from a blue blood family in washington. yet needed money. her father had been an alcoholic. and so lucy came three or four days a week and worked for the roosevelts and somewhere in that period of time between 1914 and 1918 a relationship developed between lucy and franklin. >> how long was the affair? >> as long as we know, two or three years in that period of time between '14 and '18. it came to an abrupt end when she happened to come upon a packet of love letters that she are written to franklin. she later said when she opened letters that the bottom fell out of her world. she actually offered franklin a divorce immediately. but i'm convinced it was the last thing he wanted. i think he never meant for the marriage to be over about by his relationship with lucy. i think the attraction is she was confident, gay, easy. eleanor during that period of her life was still haunted by the insturts of her own chuldhood where her mother told her she was ugly when she was a little girl and father was an alcoholic. the mother-in-law sarah was intrusive about the kids. and so i think franklin felt attracted to this happy, young woman lucy mercer. but when con fronted with a thought of losing eleanor, it's last thing he wanted. >> back there in those days, did -- what did the public know? did they know about polio? did they know about the braces on his legs? did they know about lucy mercer? did they know about missy? did they know about princess martha of norway? >> this is one of the most interesting things to me in the world. certain members of the press knew about lucy mercer. they knew missy lahan lived in the white house. they knew there was a set of unconventional relationships. yet there was then a certain kind of sense that a president's private life is his private life. and unless whatever he's doing has an impact on the public activities, i talked to one old reporter who said who are we to judge? we're not ankles our selves. it's not sporting to report on the unconventional relationships in the white house. as far as paralysis goes, what astonisheded me is the majority of the people thought that he was simply lame and the reason they were allowed to feel that way was that not a single newsreel ever showed him in his wheelchair on his braces being crippled. there was almost like an unspoken code of honor on the part of the press that the president wasn't to be seen that way. if a young photographer came along and tried to snap a picture of the president, sometimes report woeers would s him being carried from a car into a building and yet they never took a picture. if a young guy tried to do that, a older guy would knock the camera to the ground. there was a kind of dignity to the office of the presidency then that i think is really missing right now. and both the side of the press and the president. roosevelt understood the importance of holding his private life secure. he would have never thought about talking about his mother's domineeringness or his feelings about lucy mercer. this was a reserve that i suspect served us better at that time. >> you also talk about mrs. roosevelt's daily column. did she write it her snefl. >> she did. absolutely. and if you read them, you can see the only way it was possible for her to write that column was really a recording of what she did during the day. and the only reason the column worked, you know, it wasn't high thoughts. i wasn't great moments of issues. but it was so warm just as she was and so full of activity. her schedule was even more extraordinary than his. when you look at the ushers diaries, her daily life is three times as long as franklin's. she never stopped. she went into the mines. there is the famous car teens of the miners saying here comes elanor roosevelt. she went to visit blacks in the south. she went to ccc camps. that kind of traveling gave her experiences she could recount in her daily column and just tell people what she was thinking and feeling as she met so many americans in the course of her travels. >> what would happen if you took the roosevelt presidency and moved it to modern day america? column every day, radio show. you know, handicapped affairs and all that. how much of this would still be -- >> it's really scare to think about. if eleanor and franklin had not been allowed that network of friendship that's allowed them to sustain themselves while they were going through the difficult days of the depression and the war, they wouldn't have been as strong as leaders as they were. i'm convinced that roosevelt needed the relaxation that missy could provide but suppose the press is saying who is this woman? at one point missy was involved with harry hopkins? can you imagine, harry is living there too. is harry involved with missy? i think in some way that's if we hadn't had at that time that kind of space for their private lives, they wouldn't have been reflenished as political leaders. and so, too, now the paralysis is more interesting in some ways. you almost wish that roosevelt had the courage to go to the public and say i'm crippled and it's okay. they loved him so much because of courage and strength. but only at the very end of his life did he ever give a speech sitting down when he came back from the alter he was so tired. he finally excused himself and instead of standing on braces and sat down and for some reason had that speech made an enormous motional impact on the country. they then saw that he was conquering this disability. but at that time, nobody thought you could go to your country and tell them that were paralyzed. >> well, douching the last presidential years in the war, he's only down there three or four times. he went down there initially because the hot springs that came out of the ground naturally in that area were thought to help people with polio. sow created a whole rehab center and lots of patients would be down there. i think somehow his contagious confidence helped them to get through their own polio. and sow liked to spend every trafr thanksgiving with them. >> you go to all these places? >> i did. what's amazing is it is such a primitive setting. you look at the little white house which is what they called the house where roosevelt would stay. there is this tiny living room and dining room, one combined room, his bedroom is the size of a twin -- you know, a small boys bedroom. then there is one other bram that is where missy would stay. and one other guest room where eleanor would stay. and that's it. and you keep thinking about imagining much more lushous surroundings for a president of the united states. but he loved the simplicity of it. it tells you a lot about him to see. that. >> what about camp obela? >> the place that whaz marriage's estate when he was a young boy. it's off the border of maine and can d.a. a beautif canada and waits a beautiful summer home. it is also the place he got polio. they didn't really travel there much longer after those early years. they went there a lot in the teens and the early 1920s. but after he got polio, franklin's wife eleanor would go up there a lot because she loved it. but he didn't go back there very much after that. >> what impact did it have that he was an absolute only child? >> absolute critical impact. he was not only an only child but his father was a sick my man from the time he was young. his mother was a very young mother who was told she could never have other children after franklin was born because it had been a tough birth. so all of her love which was large got focused on this child. and i think about it sometimes. i mean i think she gave him probably the greatest asset a mother can give a child that, sense of unconditional love. but because she was so important, she never allowed him the freedom to feel he could stand apart from her. and even though maybe that's the source of his confidence, one of my favorite quotes by churchill says that when you met roosevelt, i think sarah roosevelt created this in her son, he had such confidence, such sparkle. that it was like opening your first bottle of champagne to be around him. i think that's a great gift a mother gives a child. but if only she'd known when to separate. i think he would have had an easier time with intermayimacy other people. >> you go to hyde park and the two big chairs, one is marked sarah and the other is franklin number chair for eleanor. >> exactly. you go through as a tourist and the hostess just says it o to you as if this is natural. here is where sarah sat and franklin. where did eleanor sit? wherever she could find a chair. you look at the dining room, sarah is at one end and franklin and eleanor had to find a place where she co. that house, that big house at hyde park as they called it reflects that sarah remained the mistress of that house throughout all of their married life, even after she died there is this sad moment when eleanor wants to change the house around a little to make it her house now that her mother-in-law is finally dead. and franklin can't bear the thought of making any changes in his boyhood home. >> this isn't a book but a little map that they give you at -- we'll get a closer shot of it here at hyde park. it shows the bedrooms on the second floor. you have franklin and eleanor's rez volt. and that's where his mother stayed. how often were they all there together? >> sarah would always be there when franklin and eleanor were there. and what is astonishing to look at is the relate youive size of the bedrooms. when you see franklin's very large and spacious. you see sarah's, very large and spacious. eleanor has a single bed in what must have been the dressing room for one of the bedrooms in between the two of them. that's the part of eleanor that she obviously didn't have to take that small of a room. but there was a part of her that was a martyr in a certain sense and liked to have tough conditions to live up to as a challenge because she had been used to those as a child. and i found that part very sad. >> harry hopkins died at age 55. i wrote this down when i was going through your book. lucy mercer died at 57. thompson was -- >> eleanor's secretary. her missy lahan. >> died at 61. princess martha died at 53. >> yeah. >> anna, the daughter died at 64 -- yeah. >> she's pretty young too. >> how come? >> harry hopkins, when he was at the iend of the new deal period he had cancer in the stomach. but somehow public life and public service game him an extra lease on life. when roosevelt made him his foreign policy adviser, he was able to get through what most people would have died. from he was so sick during the war. he looked like he was dying. he was so thin. his body was being eaten away. after there was no longer room for him in public life, then he himself died. churchill said he was like a crumbling lighthouse. so full of fire and energy and kept him alive but his body was giving way to him. to understand what happened to princess martha, she had some illnesses during her 40s. she died young in her 50s. and so did lucy. tuberculosis spread and something bad happened to them. it seems really strange. especially now as we get older. she team much younger dying. >> houp how old was fdr when he died? >> he was 63 when he died. >> and how old was elanor roosevelt? >> eleanor lasted from 1882 to 1961. so she was 70 something. she lasted an extra 17 years after fdr's death. >> the kids? how many kids were there? >> there were five children. the daughter anna was the oldest. and then there were four sons. jimmy, elliott, john, and franklin jr. and i think what happened is it was hard for the five of them to grow up in the shadow of that giant oak of their parents. for the four boys -- actually, the five children had a combination of 18 marriages between them. i think they had a hard time apprenticing themselves to wk g becoming people in their own right. they wanted to skip steps and run for governor and they never got their own confidence on their own. it's not an easy part of this whole story. >> anna married twice. her second husband jumps out of a hotel room in new york city. >> right. he was -- >> how come? >> he was a manic depressive and under sedation for his psychological illness. they had already separated. he was always troubled. you can see it during the marriage. they write each other amazing romantic letters. you feel them clinging to each other in an almost unnatural way. shortly after the war, her husband felt he no longer had the platform of the roosevelt presidency to stand on now that roosevelt was dead and couldn't make his way in the publishing world anymore and got so sad he jumped out of a window and killed himself. >> did you interview them? >> i talked to all three of their children. eleanor c. graves, her oldest daughter and curtis roosevelt, her second child and johnny, the son. >> john died at age 64, the son of fdr. he had two marriages. the but died a republican? >> yes. he was the only one who became a republican. he actually became a republican pretty early in his life. much to the great dismay of the family. >> fdr jr. died at 74. married four times. >> right. >> what was he like? >> he did have his father's charm. people who knew him said that when he smiled you could see fdr and that sparkling personality autopsy over again. did he have some success in politics. and in fact was very instrumental in john kennedy's campaign in west virginia. roosevelt was still a imaginic name in west virginia at the time of the 1960 election. they sent fdr jr. down there to campaign for kennedy. considered one of the things that turned the tide. >> elliott married five times. >> elliott married five times. >> died at age 80. >> right. >> i did get a chance to talk to him before he died. again, there would be that twinkle in the blue eyes that gave you a memory of frank roosevelt. he had a tough time finding himself. i think the alcoholism that was in eleanor's family visited itself upon elliott. he had success in politics. he was a mayor in palm beach. mainly what he did is wrote mystery stories after a while in which elanor roosevelt is the defective. his mother becomes a detective. so he wrote a series of sort of tell all books about the family that all the other kids found very disquieting. >> james died at age 83 in 1991. he ran democrats for nixon? >> right. i mean you wonder what eleanor and franklin would have thought. he had four marriages as well. he had some success. he never was able to hold on to his career or to his family very easily. so it's not been an easy time for any of those children. >> would you mind jumping to the end? how much do you remember about the last couple days of fdr? >> what happened was that after he came back from it the alter conference and after gave this major speech to the congress in march of 1945, everybody could see his health was failing. >> ti end of march went to warm springs. indeed, it did seem he brought with him his two cousins, these are characters too. the cousins. and margaret and they kept him company. he didn't have that much work to do. for the first week or, so it seemed like he might be getting a little bounce back, getting weight back. he was losing weight tremendously in that last year. at a certain point, he invited lucy mercer to stay with him. stayed in a little guest house across wait from his lyle lyttle white house and brought with her a painter friend who wanted to do a portrait of roosevelt. then what happens he is seems to be getting better. he takes the little driving trips with lucy. there was this favorite place he had where he could see the whole valley in georgia from that place. and lucy later wrote she never forget that day when he talked to her about all the plans he had after the presidency was over and what he hoped to do with the world and how he still had idealism about what the world would be like after the war was over. but then on a certain morning on april 12th, he woke up and people surprisingly thought he looked better than he had for weeks. his color was radiant almost. probably it was as doctors later said that the blood clot was beginning to be felt in the skin and coloring. he kept everybody company. he was a wonderful storyteller. all that morning he was talking to lucy and her friend madam who was painting a portrait of him at that time. the two spinster cousins are there. then in the middle of talking to them. he said i have a terrific headache and he slumped forward. and one of the cousins went over to him thinking he dropped his cigarette or something, then she realized he had become unconscious. they called for doctors. they called for help. and they carried him into his bedroom. lucy knew enough to leave. she knew she shouldn't be there. so they did leave. but then what happened is he died about an hour and a half later. he never regained consciousness. they finally called eleanor and told her. she was in the middle of giving a speech in washington when she found out. and she knew she said the minute the phone rang that something had happened. she could just feel it. they didn't tell her he died. you have to come back to the white house immediately. >> they called her away from the podium. >> yes. she had just finished giving a speech and someone was doing a piano concert. she excused herself. she had this amazing presence. she said i must leave now. she went to the white house and told her he had died. so she immediately called for harry truman, the vice president to come so she could give the news to harry truman. that's one of the celebrated moments in history when truman says to her, is there anything i can do for you and her first response is, no, but is there anything i can do for you for you're the one in trouble now. but then she had the presence of mind to ask him was it ethical for her to use a government plain to go to warm springs to see her husband's body? of course, truman provided that for her. you can't imagine people asking that today. she gets down to warm springs, georgia, and as you would do when there is a death like this, she asked her cousin who's were there. tell me everything that happened in the last 24 hours. and laura i believe always loved fdr and always been jealous of eleanor. for she maliciousy decided to tell he will no are that lucy was there. she didn't have. to she just said maybe she would have found out anyway. and then when pushed further, she elected to tell her that lucy was at the white house the last year and anna her daughter was the one to make the arrangements. i can't even imagine what it must have been like to present a strong face to the world that she did by getting in that train and going back with her husband on that famous train fried warm spring to washington knowing inside this deep hurt that she felt. when she got to the white house anna was there. and all that anna could say was as her mother confronted her really angrily, how you could do this to me. all anna said is i didn't know what to do. i loved you both. i felt caught in a crossfire. and anna later said that she was sure their relationship had been destroyed forever. she thought he had lost her mother. and then what happened, i knew i didn't want the end the book at that point even though a death is a natural place to end it. i felt so sad. so i decided to follow the story through the sum eastern the fall of area 45 after his death. thank god what i was able find is that as eleanor traveled the country again that summer, everywhere she wement people kept telling her how much they loved her husband. people she thought were her people, poor people, taxi drivers felt their lives were so much better off at the end of the war than at the start. she had been fighting him through the war. she wanted the war to be a vehicle for social reform on civil rights, daycare and factory. she wanted more than he could provide. but now she saw she later said in the summer of '5 45 that the country was a great place. veterans were going to college on the gi bill of rights. unions were stronger than ever before. as she heard the tales, she began to feel a sense of how much the country owed to franklin roosevelt. she felt that and somehow amazingly able to forgive him for what had happened. and then finally in august of '45, after the bomb was dropped, she was able to go to -- and the war came to an end, she was able to go to anna and forgive her as well affording a reconciliation between the two of them that lasted for the rest of their lives. i many you say as a biographer, when i learned that, my heart just felt so full and knowing this woman has done something i'm not sure i could have done. could i have the kind of spirit to forgive such a deep hurt like that? but so wonderful for her she d it meant that rest of her life those next 17 years and instead of harboring bitterness toward her husband, she loved him even more then in some way thanksgiving in life. she was able to incorporate all of the strengths into herself and she had always been the idealistic one in the relationship. he was the practical one. she is the one that thought what should be done and what could be done. and now after he died, she became partly more like him. she was a much better politician after his death than brfrment now she had to be both of them. amazing end to this story that makes you realize, you know, if you look that story why the outside in it as the media would probably do today, they would accuse him of infidelity. they might accuse him of harassment for his relationship with secretary, maybe accuse anna of betrayal of her mother. and yet none of those label was be right. i mean i'm absolutely convinced these people never meant to hurt one another. they were simply trying to get through their lives with the best possible mixture of love and respect, through work and affection. and it seems to me that challenge is not to do what is so prevalent today in biography to expose and to label and stereotype. what i really wanted to try and do was to extend empathy to understand why they needed all the relationships and not to judge them harshly because of their own human needs. >> you have some references to the fact that she went in to stand by his body at warm springs, moments by herself and then when she got to the white house she did the same thing and the ushers kept everybody out. how did you find that out? >> one of the ushers at the white house would was there when she asked him to close the door was actually inside the room and he wrote in a memoir that he wrote as she stood by the body she opened the casket one last time so she could say good-bye to him privately. he what standing right there. he wrote it in a memoir. so too people at warm springs wrote memoirs about those last minutes. everybody kept somewhat of a diary during that period of time. i think knowing how important it would be for later history. >> you also include a letter between lucy mercer and anna. st where did you get that? >> that letter was actually in anna's papers at the fdr library. >> had that ever been published? >> johnny jury j. the son of anna, had written a wonderful book about his mother and his father and his father's det death. that's the first time i ever seen that letter published. what is so wonderful about the letter is after fdr died, anna felt so upset during that period of time. she thought she lost her father and mother. at some point she called lucy. and lucy then maybe three or four weeks after fdr's death, lucy writes back this fabulous letter just saying what that call meant. she, too, was feeling totally out of it. here's this man that she had loved, such a good friend to her and she couldn't even express publicly or openly anything about the relationship. she is off on her own n that letter she says to anna, i want you to know how much your father loved you. and sthe tells anna such a generous letter how many times anna's father fdr talked to lucy about how much he loved his daughter. and for a daughter who had lost her father so much to hear that confirmed i guess was so important that anna's daughter told me that anna kept that letter in her bedside table for the rest of her life. it confirmed how much her father loved her but maybe confirmed her not feeling too guilty about putting lucy together with her father because it shows what and woulderful woman lucy was. >> did you ever find yourself getting emotional about all of this? >> absolutely. not only emotional. you live with the characters for six years. it took me longer to work on this book i'm afraid than the war to be fought. that is what is embarrassing. i would find myself talking to franklin and he willor and harry hopkins and to anna as if they were still alive. i mean, you really feel their presence. and when bad things happened to them, when one of them hurts one another, you feel it. i mean that's the only way can you do it when you get so absorbed in all of this. >> where did you write it? >> mostly at home. i have a study on the second floor of my house. we live right on the main street in concord. so it is one you can walk right into the town. i filled the study with pictures of franklin and eleanor and pictures of the war and the women going to war. i got all the books i could find on thisser rachlt i wanted them with me this time. i love libraries. usually you use libraries a lot. but in this case i wanted to be able to have the books as much presence. i went to every used bookstore. the book is filled with roosevelt and world war ii books. >> how do you write? >> i fear i write in long hand. i'm so primitive still. i cannot think on the typewriter. i've never been able to. so i write it all out in long hand and then the worst stage is i then copy it all over so that a typist can read the writing. and that's when i edit when i copied it all over and gave it to a typist who would type it up on a computer and give it back to me. then i didn't really look at it all until the whole first draft is done. then at the very end, i put it on my computer. he taught know edit. i'm not sure i can write on it. at least i learned how to edit on the computer. >> what time of day do you write? early in the morning. my husband and i get up really early. for some reason he awakens at like 5:30, 6:00 in the morning and sometimes we work out if we're in one of those moods and then we both start working pretty early. before the kids go to school at 7:00 and work into the middle of the afternoon and then go play tennis or do errands. that is a fun thing with a husband in the same line of business, you could take your breaks together. >> and you said six years, the whole research project and how long did it take to you write it. >> of the six years, four of them were research and two were writing. in the last two years i still needed to go more research. you would come upon something and didn't know the answer and go back to hyde park and so i was there at the library within weeks of finishing the book. >> your favorite thing in the book. >> i think my favorite thing in the book is the discovery that eleanor and franklin still loved each other during this period of time. the conventional wisdom among historians was that after the affair with lucy mercer in 1918 their marriage was a pure political partnership and i was happy to discover that they could still hurt each other, that there was still a live emotions and they kept missing aex other. i wanted to push them together because i could feel the love between them but i was glad to find that out. >> you knew lyndon johnson. did you know john f. kennedy. >> no. i met him once. but i knew the family. >> did you know jacqueline kennedy? >> yes. >> what is the closest you got to the roosevelt. >> i never saw franklin or eleanor personally. the closest i got were two sons who i interviewed before they died. and then all of the children of those children who were really very helpful to me. >> of the three books and all of the thinking about these politicians, who is your favorite? >> well, i think i'll probably always be most grateful to lyndon johnson but not for the reasons you might think. in the last years of his life on the ranch helping him on his memoirs was a searing experience to see a man who had no other resources but politics. he didn't know how to get through the day without politics. he would have mock meetings to figure out which to do and which cows were given the itch medicine and he had to have mostings like in the white house but no longer as it bills on the hill, it is the ranch. like a crazy setting for him and at night he couldn't go to sleep unless he knew how many people were coming there the library. so after a while he would say get them in, free donuts or coffee or anything. but i saw a man who sad that he couldn't even be alone when i would be down there he would ask me to stay outside of his room when he took a nap and he would wake me up at 5:30 in the morning to take. and when you're 23 you think the most exciting thing would be becoming president of the united states but he didn't balance that with love or family or friendship or sports or anything else that it left him berrest and not long after that experience of watching him die i got married and had children and one of the reasons it takes so long to write the books i wanted to be with the kids while they were little. i didn't want to be left like lyndon johnson. when president kartder was president he asked me to be the head of the peace korp and i would have loved to do and the kids were little and i remembered lyndon johnson and i knew the kids would be grown all too quickly and i didn't want to end up that way. so nothing could compete with that. >> where were you born. >> in rockville center, new york. >> in rockefeller center. >> rockville center, i was a huge baseball fan. my love of history started with baseball because my father taught me to keep score and i would recreate the games for him. the brooklyn dodger games and i thought without me he would not know and he never told me the scores were in the newspaper and that is where i started to love history. >> where do you go to college. >> to colby college in maine and then harvard. >> what was your thesis. >> in constitutional law. it was on two attempts to overturn supreme court decisions. dirkson on the prayer in the schools and the one man one vote decision and in both cases the amendments failed. >> going to write another book. >> oh, sure, my husband and i are going to work on a book together. i remember interviewing president carter saying the biggest mistake he made was writing a book with his wife. but we're going to do a book about 15 decisions and johnson and each one will illustrate a different power of the presidency and each one will be told as a story and a dramatic moment in that president's life so a young person reading it in college would get a history of the presidency but through these great decisions. so hoping they'll love history as much as we do. >> what do your kid think of all of this. >> because we've been home so much of the time when we work, they haven't really seen the end results until now as teenagers. they see this book out and they see their father in the quiz show moving and being played as the 27-year-old and one of them came out of the movie saying, dad, you're a stallion again. it is a pride. where it is not a career when they're con fronting who their parents are. they're much more quiet. i do television at home and local commentary for our abc affiliate in boston and a weekly television show for 12 years. when we go on the streets people will know me from that and the kids are queasy about getting stopped all of the time. the writing is the fabulous thing to combine with family life because we're home most of the time. >> we haven't got much time. but when you go to fdr's home and see the library and then val kill which is say couple of miles away where eleanor spent her time. what was your thoughts about what kind of family feeling would that be. she over there and him at the other place. >> and the thing so striking in the two separate places. the big house of sarah and franklin is perfectly put together and the china matches and the furniture is gorgeous. eleanor has mix matched china and every chair in the living room was a different size so a fought and tall and thin person and short person would be comfortable in the chairs. you know how opposite their temperament was. she liked to make people feel at ease and he loved the elegance of the first place. so in some ways they were never meant for each other but thank god the opposite attracted when they were young and had enough to keep them going through this long marriage. >> i know this is not fair with a minute to go, but how about the relationship between her women friends at val kill, a lot has been written about that. what do you think the relationship was. >> i think it is a relationship where eleanor was loved by somebody particularly lorena hick hock for the first time she felt the center of somebody else's life. i know some claim she was a lesbian but i don't think that is so but this woman loved her and she loved her and helped her to become a better first lady. the truth is historians don't know whether they went beyond hugs and kisses and people try to appropriate eleanor one way or another and i think if she came back today and were considered a lesbian and it gave a role model to younger people she would be the first to say that's fine but i don't think she would have ever defined herself that way. >> "no ordinarytime" with fdr with doris kearns goodwin. thank you very much. >> oh, you're so welcome. television has changed since c-span began 41 years ago but our mission continues. to provide an unfiltered view of government. already this year we've brought you primary election coverage, the presidential impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. you could watch all of c-span public affairs programming on television, online, on listen on our free radio app. and be part of the national conversation through c-span daily washington journal program or through our social media feeds. c-span created by private industry. america's cable television companies as a service and brought to you today by your television provider. coming up, on american history tv on c-span 3, a look back at presidents who faced crises while in the white house. first, john seigenthaler on james k. polk who conducted the 1846 to 1848 war against mexico. then presidential historian richard norton smith discussed herbert hoover, an uncommon man. after that james mann discussed former president george w. bush. now here is john seigenthaler on the presidency of james k. polk. >> every saturday night american history tv takes you to college classrooms around the country for lectures in history. >> why do you all know who lizzy borden is and raise your hand if you ever heard of this murder, the jean harris murder trial before this class? >> a deepest cause where we'll find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. >> so we're going to talk about both of these sides of the story here, right. the tools, the techniques of slave owner power and we'll also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. >> watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the american revolution to september 11th. lectures in history on c-span 3 every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv. and lectures in history is available as a podcast. find it where you listen to podcasts. john seigenthaler, author of "james k. polk." how did they talk to into doing biographer on this. >> john schlesinger called me

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