businesses that i've contributed. there's all kinds of books and articles you can find and i will be sure to send that link. >> thank you so much. on behalf of all of us, thank you so much. we had a terrific hour with you, so informative and we know we will hear a lot more in your career. thank you. >> thank you.

hello, everyone. i don't know if you can hear me. thank you for joining us for this effort between the series of american ancestors of the genealogical society, the state library of massachusetts and us, publishers weekly, 2020 bookstore of the year. we are open online and in person with limited capacity. we do local delivery and have curbside pickup and a special pandemic newsletter and other stuff so visit us. before i introduce the guest and moderators, i want to give a few housekeeping notes using crowd cast and some of you may have not used it before. the event is recorded so you can watch it back if you only stayed for two nights talk because your

water was boiling or you wanted to share with a friend it will be here as well as on our facebook page. a second, there is a lovely chat window on the bottom right where it says say something nice. please do, say hi. i see people have been using it since we started, telling us where you are coming from and of course it goes without saying please keep it respectful and we will reserve the right to remove any one which i don't think will be necessary. right next to that box at the bottom of the screen you'll see thyou willsee the words ask a qu can type their, have any questions or we will have time at the end. it's also live streaming on facebook so just so you know we cannot see your questions and if you want to participate you have

to join us on crowd cast. at the bottom of the browser you can buy our book and we are delighted to offer free shipping when you order through the link and david is providing us with signed books. i will turn you over to margaret and elizabeth and david. margaret is the director of american ancestors at the new england geological society and the producer of the literary program and head of special collections i'm sure she will tell you about her eleanor shrine. david is a local boy who used to take the train. he's the author of award-winning biographies and i have no doubt that this will add to his list of awards.

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and tried for a number of

years to get the story the syndicate was the national syndicate and his papers were down there at the part of the response to the right where they are alphabetical and the first one i saw to my left was roosevelt and i just picked up the and the hopefulness that this site of the morningstar for mrs. roosevelt sleeping porch was in the first paragraph of

the daily column and with a sense of wonder and attention enjoy and love and then to discover scholz. i had a very strong feeling that this was something that need to be continued and that was the beginning strangely on the same spot it turns out in the basement where i was when the allman arrived in the number one - - a neighborhood

that was a moment of escape from madison up to 47 or 49 that's another story. so want to say before i turn it back over and to give a shout out and thank you to one of your neighbors and to my great assistant eleanor parker and the shout out to a treating buddy and then to ran over to concorde and always bed are jumping on with very few people these days and to certify that we were taking the train appears was doing that. so it was very vivid and to remain the outer limits and to

be highly literary and i'm so proud to be here tonight. >> i love your connection to boston and new york new york personnel but but it is fascinating to hear and as i said we do have a lot of partners one is per square book so it is a thrill and as many of you know me when the series of american inspiration.

i cannot think of a better person to be part of the series the end eleanor roosevelt. she and her family with fdr are large figures in american history and eleanor in particular is such an end one - - an inspiration for inclusion and diversity and is such a will model and a truly inspiring and a big fan of roosevelt and start off with the first question. >> let me apologize for being late to join you as my computer shut down the head of special collections with the state house in downtown boston the depository of publications and many other things we are

glad to be part of this tonight so we have written some questions for david and compiled questions that came of people when they registered and those that come in during the talk tonight we will start with the one question because i am a huge the another is also including questions i came in from other people. here is my first question. with that line in the whole book and there were many favorite lions was right after the dedication page but before the table of contents it is a quotation that says i felt obliged to notice everything. to me, that sentence can everything that happened to her or shaped her life.

i wondered if you can give us some context for that quote and tell us if you agree with my thoughts? >> i am so touched of your thoughts because as an epigraph i hoped that would sound as an overture to her life. you still listen to aaron copeland and with expansion from her own personal life to the life of the country and her ability to notice something of a survival mechanism or a coping mechanism when she was young and i was almost shocked at how many people left records of working so carefully at

them sometimes feel they were staring if she didn't think someone was noticing her she would look very carefully at them i think she missed a thing. and in and wanted democracies great principles which is reciprocity that everybody counts with life and rates are equally judged and taken into account, i thank you are noticing was also extremely democratic and equal opportunity. one of the things that everybody who did meet her who came into context with her felt that being seen by someone who comes from the center the governmental democracy of washington dc was individual experience in those days and to make claims

towards someone like eleanor roosevelt is sure humanity had been taken into account and i think that was one of gifts that was automatic and natural and authentic i think she felt there wasn't anybody she could learn from there she understood them carefully on their own terms and then to take it back to the president sometimes. go back to an agency or back to her own column to perfect those thoughts and what she saw in others so the noticing i have an entire file name did

noticing because of's job description. >> so they can. >> also part of that sentence is the would acknowledge. i was very struck how obligated he felt to so many people in her life starting with her father and then to move subject to other people's controls to the boarding school in england and she looked after the girls that were there and then she looked

after fdr there was a lot of stepping back into play jean that she did. she just born this type of service? it is amazing. >> is to think of eleanor roosevelt when i was younger as the greatest good of all time there was a to go to quality but were began to appear more certainly to me is that the wish to do a good mp good had a great deal to do with needing to reshape ideas of her father who died in such disgrace as a trunk and a junkie and absently dragged through the mud ultimately in

his final years and then afterwards by people in his own world and people she came across. for wish to do a good became something that translated and she to be loved and to take the care and to give back to her and it became a mission to be the kind of person whose usefulness was illuminating or enlightening to create the offensive awakening that became her transaction. >> we of questions why she withstood certain things to she had feelings is that the

capacity to forbear quick. >> her willingness to be tolerant is something she first worked on to understand to understand parts of herself she cannot fulfill and others rose the acceptance to well to be tolerant and it was battle and the struggle that she conquered. she had to conquer wonderful feelings she didn't really have a broad range she wasn't allowed to express anger as a child she had a resentment even a mild peak to me for broad angry she was taught to go into the bathroom hitting her head of the bathtub and it into the hotel but please. she was very constrained and then to respond should first

only numeral two turned to the wall to be furious and this is part of the responses in that transcendence allowed will obviously need to become independent woman she later became a step-by-step. one reason about the roosevelt marriage worked in the long run as a partnership she learned early not so much lucy is a rifle but later people who came to help franklin became part of their lives and replaced her almost as a

surrogate and to become part of the family and their parallel lives. >> many who attend our author talks are interested in how authors do their work so this the freeze sees like it has a cast of thousands of similar names. thank you by the way for those characters in the beginning of the book especially the nicknames. can you tell us how you manage your research and how you keep details being documented? and asking this but only as a library and. >> there is a couple of tricks that i learned is the idea

that each person of color so franklin was always every index card red card and his mama were roosevelt yellow is any woman or man eleanor fell in love with it is a love interest yellow but it works and quotation from other sources >-right-angle-bracket loosely useful to keep things straight in the beginning and then you can expand the colors purpose for people those that were the go-betweens.

all in chronological order i learned years ago when i was doing a profile every single thing that came in that was complicated by information gathering pre- internet and thought much of his work was global the only way to keep things straight was to file everything chronologically. every time we get a piece of information if we do put chronologically into a chronological file when it comes into your own life you remember but also going into a chronological file for every day of eleanor's life and then

put them in her life when they happened and in that way the two things you put next to each other reveal something that is quite often the case for what was not there in the first plac place. >> the first answer is index cards. >> i have to have it in my hands in the beginning going into the great digital soup and i have a space because of my mother but to end up in the digital rolling stones and then to be alive. >> that sounds like fun. [laughter]

i was fortunate in my early machine clear to work for pat can off. he kept a chronology of everything and ask is administrative person every letter that he wrote that would be all, logical. and then to say please give me 1990. >> and then that becomes its own subfile. each of them separately very clear. and i am delighted and were fired in doing to keep all the gilded age families.

the roosevelt marriage world fdr the emerging of the oyster bay that comes from the valley that those on the hudson valley where a remarkable collection and and our hall, eleanor's mother and hung out with other high society and it is an amazing collection and in many ways thinking of eleanor roosevelt and is a portrait of new york and is a neighbor girl. and to get away from that

gilded age and then the vanderbilts might divorce but they do not. and then in history. >> and very much the ones in charge and then in general the older version of great wealth and that was a portrait of the city what was left on the cutting floor and thank you early again who help me cut out for the city she was born into but absolute raised with

unimaginable wealth and unimaginable poverty and the way the immigrants arrived at cap the garden and then to finally transcend to be committed to reshaping and saving those that were performed the franklin roosevelt those that help save people who didn't have representation and the guy from tammany hall came over bringing you services to do the building politically or to buy you something. eleanor and franklin and then

to replace that corrupt city to give special favors and and the american dream. and the american dream. one - - of the work and the statue of eleanor roosevelt and with that bible basin.

and then i was shown in the statute first. what she refers everywhere. she carried her handbag everywhere and arrived with violence and always have something for you. her courtesies were a civilized woman of her class and time. she never gives up whenever worried about being identified as well but accordingly she was who she was. so that kind of freedom and then those like him uncomfortable. >> so in the section that

covers the first years i was struck by the house similar of what we are going through it now with the financial crisis climate disaster. it is very similar to what we are going through right now. and how she reacted to all of these things. >> there are two good answers right off the top of my head. she may listening part of the job description of first lady. was deep and sincere had a profound listening and how

that might affect the other people in their lives i think she is my a.k.a. doctor. and then to make diagrams of the rest of the family to understand what kind of illnesses you might have inherited. she was a diagnostician and without question the ability to listen is the most important thing to day. so hatred has been upon us for a while in a public way that was unleashed and to take people by surprise. it shocked me to find that constant hatred she was subjected to as a woman but

and was actually reviled because where jim crow was in the ascendancy and the kkk at one point and you during the obama years that is now part of the discourse but her ability to let that go and never react directly or to find a way around the over and under sometimes through sometimes was never committed to winning or to winning or that stuck in was always moving past that.

and that you don't see enough of them. >> we will turn to some questions that came in from our viewers. >> i gathered them together i will get to all three of them and then add to it myself as a college grad with the education and who influenced eleanor the most? i would love to talk about her remarkable experience of education and also fdr's approach clearly wanted in a

good way but both of them formed by their education and tell us more. >> eleanor was told by her grandmother that if she were to go to college she would never attract a man it was thinking the point of college was to get your mr s degree or simply a few more fine tuning seven debutante but limited i go to college in their class very few did in her generation although there were those from her generation and they did go but not the women she came of age with she went to a boarding school in england that her aunt and the sister of roosevelt had gone to

become the it girl of that era who was a charismatic french woman who was progressive in her politics but to emphasize one thing above all others that a woman needed to think for herself the idea of education at the time was thought to be harmful potentially to women's health woman may get ideas and influence you might need to send her away to someplace if she got too carried away so this is radical to take the women of the then aristocracy

who were not being told at home to think for themselves or to say much of anything and she told them not only must they think for themselves but speak their minds and carry an argument through and to defend part of the argument still today that is natural to us six greater were denied and disapproved of then 15 and over she stayed with madame suez who favorite she became which was more of a sense of position as a graduate student and assistant professor world where to teach younger girls and responsibilities as she was when she became all her life which was the intermediary going between the authority and others to defend various classmates.

she took education as a gift and what she learned there she brought back. one of the things she learned there she blamed herself for later was that the high standards, she had to learn at the table at the school how to converse with the grown up on subjects she knew nothing about so to pick up details and come back later in the conversation as if she now knew better or more than what she did. not exactly bs singapore something but it was a way to project herself that she learned later to curtail she

went to the books later on and said i will learn from the ground up and to take this diplomatic version. she went back to the united states in 19 oh one and unfortunately subjected by her grandmother with a range of debutantes in society girls and it was terrific to her in large part she was an orphan by that her parents had died and the ascendancy in new york society she had lost her father in the scandalous waste every room she went into she was whispered into the poor daughter or and i roosevelt's less attractive daughter it was a public shaming and those

are all geared toward the matron and then to be involved in the dangerous liaisons and the edith wharton age of innocence and where such an outsider and it had now created the great theme to belong and to my connected and where do i fit in so she discovered another oddball coming from hyde park and the hudson river it was still isolated he would go to school late he last two years that

his peers had bonding at that time and that word he had to catch up and where he was considered an outsider i was thought of it as a meeting of the oddballs because they were cousins for both thought among their peers and charismatic and could be quite dynamic and magnetic in the world and that was the earliest attraction. >> thank you. so needy that cast of characters that was a time when she was not an orphan if you've overseen the story about a family that was magnificent now with

industrialism in the new world overtakes it but she lived in this house is an orphan dealing with the empire right out of a magnificent ever since and the close where the tennis champions of the day went on tennis was just starting and the dazzling beauties of the moment. >> and uncle valley was an amateur actor but when uncle valley and eddie were in the doubles championship of the east coast in 1880 they moved onto the national championship several years later the house

is full of their trophies and then was the only responsible one alcoholic out of control it was not horrifying but more she saw people falling apart and was the proxy trustee and showing up in court and showing up at the police station when one last time went on a bender in new york and then showed up at the station house and the officer was on the blower saying someone has to come get him out of here.

and he was the bane of her life later on and still carrying on and then she was very loyal to those answering calls the instead better but it was the beginning of her being displaced people but it was eleanor's job and she buried each of them she saw them through terrible tragedies and paid tuition. the number of people and things that she would be writing checks were in her adult life and the christmas list in the numbers of individuals whose faith that

she had a sense of responsibility was extraordinary and that was just personal and those applied to in the political world. >> so getting close to the and what's the main question and then we'll do the final one? there are so many questions go ahead with one more actually eleanor after eleanor do you have any comment? >> keep talking because after look for this very quickly. >> i am eleanor because of eleanor. >> hold on.

>> i keep almanacs on certain things that i began keeping an almanac on places that were named for her after her and here it goes. rose, midseason peony. amber kelly, clock, cake, strawberry, rodeo playing to an audience of the south, ten dollars to anyone who could ride eleanor roosevelt for two seconds. shade of blue a phantom conspiracy a spaghetti strap wedding gown, and numeral

vocational schools college and university california san diego honorary chapter of kappa delta pi multiple college buildings including a dormitory for women at rhode island as a college. world war ii plane, countless newborns the american pop music singer born october 25th 1940,writer of the movie dirty dancing, the rhodesian ridge back, 200-acre tract of land population 20000 homestead in pennsylvania a son downtown and in yosemite

national park she start with rainbow trout and urban housing projects golf course hazards with brokers especially the 360-yard park at a country club and the fourth hole in new york that was called eleanor's teeth were the brokers were spread out. but the clock because it is always on the go. >> that is my naming almanac of eleanor. >> was do the last question which again it is a combination what she appreciated during her lifetime was the great impact

realized only after her death is her legacy still relevant in today's world? >> i think there is so much pain in the world right now that eleanor is a figure now greater than ever because she saw and others and had the ability to do that so her legacy in the world today to look into you and steve that connection which we are not able to do that in real time anymore is still there when they do connect to her and her spirit which is global because it is universal and seeing the

humanity and somebody else. so when she was alive, the strangeness she was nominated for the nobel peace prize several times but never given it as the chairman over the supervisor of the universal declaration of human rights, a document that attempts to bring basic rates to people in all nations across the globe and serve as an instrument going forward should have been awarded that on her but her life is so full, i think that mattered to her that it ever took place she would've been the first to say it was her

husband's policies. in her lifetime people communicated their love and admiration to her in public. people stopped her frequently on the street and she connected frequently with people she always gave it over to franklin her husband as president and the great war leader who did not see the end of the war to give her endless decades of widowhood to sidestep the attention i could be brought to her that she was simply carrying out her husband's legacy. that was not true she would just like when she needed to but i think what she wanted was a connection and belonging

and love. think she found that in part but yet never fully and her struggles with that and the ability to see herself whole manifested at the end of her life she accepted what she had done was enough in her final struggles with tuberculosis she could say it's just not who i am to languish or fade away in the infrared world i would rather go now and in recognizing that she recognized what she was put on earth to do and to express, my favorite monument but our

thirst messenger gravestone appears there is a bowtie engraved on the stone there are two stones but his says something like best of love in her says she tried. i think eleanor tried and succeeded and did finally love and was loved. finding out from herself primarily was a great struggle but i do think today even just to fall through the digital world of the inspiration she brings to people even those that are known to make you inferior without your consent , the future belongs to those that believe in the beauty of their dreams the quotes and

ideas and are brought forward where authority is confused to the role to bring them into the process eleanor's main and legacy is to say your government does belong to you and to step up and vote. >> i have loved eleanor roosevelt my entire life now i love her even more. thank you for that i think porter square books will come back on. >> that was special. thank you. >> i went to a thing q to all three of you for coming up

with those questions and building the ones i'm sorry we didn't get the ones we talk about i'm sure we would have been happy talking about her also giving us this work of scholarship and archival work. any of us around our age are even older or younger, she is the quintessential first lady when you think of what the president spouse should be like who you measure up against is eleanor roosevelt and i think it's clear why she got to that place and i appreciate what her history could tell us for what is going on 100 years after her husband's presidency.

if you click on the bottom the book will be signed by david i'm sorry some people had problems with the platform. but this was wonderful and thank you for joining us.