Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Recommended by Samantha Power and Lloyd Blankfein
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See customer reviews on Amazon →A broad, narrative-heavy history of the U.S. wartime home front and the presidential household, rich in anecdote and archival detail. It stitches personal lives, the First Lady's public role, and the day-to-day work of the White House into a continuous story that rewards patience. What works best is texture: vivid scenes, staff troubles, and political maneuvering bring institutions to life. The main limitation is scale and repetition—long stretches of administrative minutiae and personality portraiture that flatten for readers who want concise argument or social-history breadth.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated June 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
Winner of the Pulitzer for History, No Ordinary Time is a chronicle of one of the most vibrant & revolutionary periods in US history. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin weaves together a number of story linesthe Roosevelts marriage & partnership, Eleanors life as First Lady, & FDRs White House & its impact on America as well as on...
Difficulty:hard
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View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 3 sources and appears in American History, Most Recommended Books, and History.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
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Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
