No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II | 
| Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  116 reviews
Sales Rank: 3467
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 768
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0671642405
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.9170922
EAN: 9780684804484
ASIN: 0684804484
Publication Date: October 1, 1995
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Amazon.com
A compelling chronicle of a nation and its leaders during the period when modern America was created. With an uncanny feel for detail and a novelist's grasp of drama and depth, Doris Kearns Goodwin brilliantly narrates the interrelationship between the inner workings of the Roosevelt White House and the destiny of the United States. Goodwin paints a comprehensive, intimate portrait that fills in a historical gap in the story of our nation under the Roosevelts.
Product Description
No Ordinary Time is a monumental work, a brilliantly conceived chronicle of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary periods in the history of the United States. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines--Eleanor and Franklin's marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor's life as First Lady, and FDR's White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 111 more reviews...
 Wonderful piece of living history May 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Rarely does an excellent writer appear in the biography universe. Goodwin uses her amazing skills to weave the story of two remarkable and very human people into and through a momentous time in the world's history. While she sometimes gets slowed down by statistics of limited value (for example how many rubber bands were collected in rubber drive) overall the writer has found a brilliant balance between facts, feelings and remembrances. The book's main revelations center mainly on the enormous contribution ER made to race relations and labor relations during that desperate time. One comes to feel that if not for FDR's hyperactive, agitating wife little or no social progress would have been made during the war years. I have read several biographies of FDR and Churchill and was still enriched by the layers of detail Goodwin has brought to her work, highly recommended.
Intimate Portrait of FDR's White House During WW2 May 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Whatever the academic infractions allegedly committed by Ms. Goodwin in writing this book were, she has produced an excellent work that lays bare in detail the workings of FDR's White House during the Second World War from May 1940 onward when Nazi Germany ended the phony war and stampeded over France and Europe to the doorstep of Britain before turning on Soviet Russia. This is a story that in general terms most literate persons know or should know and it is precisely this legacy, not Ms. Goodwin's academic credentials, that sardonic critics of this work and its author seek to disparage. When read in conjunction with Steve Neal's excellent monograph on Wendell Willkie or similar works, a vivid picture of this historical period and its life and death issues for the future of humanity emerge in the context of a distinct theme: that the prospect of an imminent victory of Nazi Germany and fascism in the late 30s and early 40s was viewed with complacency, not by the epochal FDR and "liberals", but by a wide section of conservatives and the "America First" leaning right wing, including all the principal Republican Presidential candidates in 1940 (except for maverick Willkie), whose conciliation of fascism, as in the post-war era in Latin America, was consistent with their deep hostility to FDR and the "socialism" of the New Deal from which they sought to return to the good old days of the laissez-faire capitalism of the Gilded Age in which obstacles to their unrestrained profits like the graduated income tax, social security and labor unions were eliminated.
'No Ordinary Time' is No Ordinary Book May 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Another tour de force by Goodwin. Like her "Team of Rivals", this book is a fascinating, compelling account of a fascinating, compelling period in our history. Kearns relates in great detail the many forces and waves that buffeted the American people as they geared up to face the immense challenge facing them and the Allies. I was a child then and remember a few things, especially the tension showed by the adults -- tensions I didn't understand. This book bears testament to the greatness -- the flawed greatness -- of FDR. His pragmatism and his ability to inspire his countrymen were invaluable tools as he strove to marshal a nation that was totally unprepared for war. What was surprising to me was Eleanor Roosevelt. Kearns paints her, warts and all, and the warts were plentiful. The impression I get of Eleanor was that she was a fierce liberal who saw the war not as an existential challenge to her country, but as an rare opportunity to get in place her extreme liberal agenda. I really don't think she saw the war as her husband did. She did a lot of good, particularly in helping eliminate racial barriers. But she hated corporations -- the very companies that made it possible for our nation to go to war with the resources they needed, especially petroleum. She tended to be blinded by her leftwing ideology and simply didn't understand or care about whether or not the private sector had the incentives to make the massive changes that turned us into the Arsenal of Democracy. FDR got it; Eleanor didn't. Also, this book reveals the very human side of its protagonists, especially the very strange relationship between the president and the first lady. Well, I could go on, but suffice it to say that this is a very profound book which reveals the tenor of one of the most challenging times in our history. If you're a Baby Boomer, especially if you have never studied much about the WWII homefront, you absolutely have to read this book. The times it chronicles are the foundation upon which the modern America is built. Kudos to Kearns Goodman for an outstanding piece of work.
The Human Side of History May 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Doris Kearns Goodwin did a remarkable job of not only recounting the hietorical events which took place from 1940 to 1945 but especially of giving us - the readers - an insight into the feelings and behavior of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanot Roosevelt and all the people surrounding them during this particularly trying period of time in our history. I was really impressed by the way she gained the insignts she did and by her skill as a writer in presnting them to us. All too often we learn about history as if it is merely a series of events which can be presented to us in a chronological chart denoting what happened and the date that it took place. Here, in this book, Goodwin filled in the "spaces" among the events by revealing to us how people felt not only about the events but also about one another as they tried to use their roles in life to move what was taking place in a direction which they felt was desireable.
Franklin Roosevelt is portrayed as the consummate politician - practicing politics as "the art of the possible" ususually with a sense of what it was desireable to do, but always attending to the matter of how far he could go in the pursuit of what he felt should be done without loswing the powere which his position enabled him to exercise. Eleanor Roosevelt is portrayed both as a heroine - if you agree with her ideals and admire her peristent desire to bring about the changes she thinks should occur in our society - and as a very insensitive person blinded to her own egotism bu what she thought were her ideals. A complicated person, she seems ofte toplace her own needs ahead of every thing else because she is utterly convinced of the worthiness of the causes she espouses and the impotance of the role she must play in bringing them about. The relationship between Frnklin and Eleanor forms a great part of this story and leaves the reader with many questions to ponder, particularly with the effect that they both had on their children as they, themselves, played the role of mother and father.
As the story is unfolded about this "no ordinary time" Goodwin does not spare us the painful exposure to the shortocomings of our society, particularly with reference to the treatment of Blacks and Jews which was so evident during this time. Over and over again we are reminded of the all too prevalent himan disosition to place nationality and culture and race ahead of humanity in defining our relationships with one another.
She is an excellent historian and writer and I reccomend this book enthusiastically to any one.
Rooseveltiana April 7, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Are there many Roosevelt lovers out there who are under 70? I'm one of them, but I can't for the life of me understand why. It is perhaps because of the low esteem in which I hold the Presidents of my life time: Kennedy, Johnson and so on. God, how low we have come. It is surely a period of unprecedented mediocrity in national leadership. Can one honestly compare Bush, Clinton, Carter, or Ford to the likes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Why is this? That FDR was hated in his time is now more understandable to me, as I hadn't before understood how radical his policies were. Of course, none of his experiments has lasted and this may explain why he is so easily loved. Only Social Security survives. I love the personal anecdotes the author has assembled to tell the story of the President's ordeal. We see again how much he suffered. Those four terms really were too much for him. The author of this work is a "petticoat historian," part of the feminist movement in history to tell the grand historical stories from the point of view of the bathroom and bedroom. If it were not deemed too personal and in bad taste, Goodwin would describe the President's bowel movements. One might very well say "why not?" but the point that bothers me is why such things are of such great interest to the author. Surely, the Battle of Stalingrad is a wee bit more important than Roosevelt's breakfast menu. Nonetheless, Goodwin is discreet and tasteful and, therefore, the anecdotes she shares are personal but never vulgar. She possesses an entrancing style, which makes this a quick and delightful read. That we have had such a sorry group of Presidents since FDR is a sad thing but, who knows?, with new crises approaching, the country may yet produce another great man.
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