Eleanor Roosevelt, 3-volume biography By Blanche Wiesen Cook
埃莉諾·羅斯福，三卷本傳記，布蘭奇·維森·庫克著
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她的母親叫她「奶奶」——一個殘酷的綽號，意在提醒她，她外表平平、笨拙，不值得被愛。羅斯福成長於優渥的家庭，但優渥的環境也無法讓她免受家中殘酷的傷害。她的母親安娜·霍爾·羅斯福是一位舉世聞名的美人，而她的女兒，在她看來，卻並非如此。
她的父親艾利歐特·羅斯福非常疼愛她。他認為她的敏感和聰慧是上天賜予的禮物。然而，在她十歲之前，父親就過世了，留給艾莉諾的只有一句揮之不去的訊息：你不值得被愛。
大多數孩子在遭受這種痛苦後，要麼變得冷漠麻木，要麼徹底崩潰。埃莉諾選擇了不同的道路。她讓苦難教會了她同情心。她明白，被低估有時也是一種自由。多年後，她將這種智慧提煉成一句至今仍振聾發聵的名言：“未經你允許，沒有人能讓你感到自卑。”
1933年富蘭克林羅斯福就任總統時，全國上下都期待著一位會舉辦晚宴、扮演花瓶角色的第一夫人。埃莉諾卻打破了這種期待。在她就職的第一年，她奔波了超過4萬英里——去的不是宮殿，而是煤礦營地、佃農小屋、監獄、醫院和學校。她只帶著一本筆記本和一連串的問題：你們需要什麼？哪裡出了問題？華盛頓視而不見什麼？
記者嘲笑她不去參加雞尾酒會，反而去探望煤礦工人。她只是簡單地回答：“我寧願去問題所在的地方，而不是去雞尾酒會的地方。”
她每天撰寫專欄“我的一天”，擁有數百萬讀者。她不用它來八卦，而是把它當作道德的記錄簿——記錄不公，呼籲改變。二戰期間，她遠渡重洋探望受傷的士兵，給悲痛的家屬寫信，並堅持探望被隔離的黑人部隊，儘管有人警告說這樣做「太具爭議性」。
當美國革命女兒會因種族原因禁止瑪麗安安德森演出時，埃莉諾公開辭職。她協助安排了安德森在林肯紀念堂的音樂會，七萬五千人聚集在那裡聆聽她演唱《我的祖國》。這不僅是一場音樂會，更是一份宣言。
1945年富蘭克林去世後，許多人認為埃莉諾會就此隱退，過著寡居的生活。然而，她卻成為了美國派往新成立的聯合國的代表。起初，她被認為只是個禮儀性的職務，但後來證明她不可或缺。她擔任了起草《世界人權宣言》的委員會主席。在擠滿了權力人物的會議室裡，她傾聽、協商，並在原則問題上拒絕妥協。 1948年12月10日，《世界人權宣言》獲得通過。埃莉諾用全世界都能理解的語言定義了人性尊嚴。
當被問到她的勇氣從何而來時，她坦言：她從未戰勝過恐懼。恐懼始終伴隨著她。但她明白，恐懼絕不能成為沉默的藉口。埃莉諾·羅斯福將第一夫人的角色從裝飾性的轉變為不可或缺的。她證明，領導力可以建立在同理心之上，同時又不失力量。她證明了被低估有時反而會成為優勢。她的力量並非源自於強加的權威，而是源自於對被忽視者、受苦者和那些令人不快的真相的關注。
那個曾被嘲笑為「老奶奶」的小女孩，最後成為了歷史上最具影響力的女性之一。她沒有抹去自己的痛苦，反而將痛苦轉化為動力。她告訴世人，勇敢並不需要無所畏懼，行動也不需要絕對的確定性。你只需要良知與勇氣並存──即使你的雙手顫抖。
羅斯福超越了她所處的時代——《經濟學人》
Her mother called her “Granny”—a cruel nickname meant to remind her she was plain, awkward, unworthy of love. Eleanor Roosevelt grew up in privilege, but privilege couldn’t shield her from cruelty inside her own home. Her mother, Anna Hall Roosevelt, was a celebrated beauty. Her daughter, she believed, was not.
Her father, Elliott Roosevelt, adored her. He saw her sensitivity and intelligence as gifts. But he died before she turned ten, leaving Eleanor with the echoing message: you are not lovable.
Most children broken by that kind of pain either harden or collapse. Eleanor chose something different. She let suffering teach her compassion. She learned that being underestimated could be a kind of freedom. Years later, she would distill that wisdom into a line that still resonates: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
When Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, the nation expected a First Lady who would host dinners and remain ornamental. Eleanor refused. In her first year, she traveled more than 40,000 miles—not to palaces, but to coal camps, sharecropper cabins, prisons, hospitals, and schools. She carried only a notebook and relentless questions: What do you need? What isn’t working? What does Washington refuse to see?
Reporters mocked her for visiting coal miners instead of cocktail parties. She answered simply: “I prefer being where the problems are, not where the cocktails are.”
She wrote a daily column, My Day, read by millions. She used it not for gossip, but as a moral ledger—documenting injustice, urging change. During World War II, she crossed oceans to visit wounded soldiers, wrote letters to grieving families, and insisted on visiting segregated Black units despite warnings it was “too controversial.”
When the Daughters of the American Revolution barred Marian Anderson from performing because of her race, Eleanor resigned publicly. She helped arrange Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial, where 75,000 people gathered to hear her sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” It was not just music. It was a declaration.
After Franklin’s death in 1945, many assumed Eleanor would fade into widowhood. Instead, she became a U.S. delegate to the newly formed United Nations. Dismissed at first as ceremonial, she proved indispensable. She chaired the committee drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In rooms filled with powerful men, she listened, negotiated, and refused compromise when principles were at stake. On December 10, 1948, the declaration was adopted. Eleanor had helped define human dignity in language the world could share.
When asked where her courage came from, she admitted: she had never conquered fear. She carried it always. But she learned fear was no excuse for silence.
Eleanor Roosevelt transformed the role of First Lady from ornamental to essential. She showed that leadership could be grounded in empathy without losing strength. She proved that being underestimated could become an advantage. Her power came not from authority demanded, but from attention paid—to the ignored, the suffering, the inconvenient truths.
The little girl mocked as “Granny” became one of the most influential women in history. Not by erasing her pain, but by turning it into purpose. She taught the world that you don’t need to be fearless to be brave. You don’t need certainty to act. You just need conscience paired with courage—even when your hands are shaking.
富蘭克林·德拉諾·羅斯福
拯救國家和世界的人
2008年10月30日摘自《經濟學人》印刷版
如果美國下一任總統想要成功，他至少需要繼承羅斯福在任期間所展現的那種品格和才能。
「我的政策和憲法一樣激進，」羅斯福在1932年競選期間曾這樣說道，當時他被指責想要將公用事業國有化。在這部令人印象深刻的新傳記中，曾撰寫過安德魯·傑克遜和本傑明·富蘭克林傳記的H.W.布蘭茲著重強調了羅斯福的貴族出身與他激進政治理念之間的對比。
羅斯福的祖先菲利普·德·拉·諾耶加入了「財富號」的清教徒行列，這艘船是繼「五月花號」之後抵達普利茅斯的第二艘船。他出身於哈德遜河谷的鄉紳和紐約的百萬富翁商人家庭，先後就讀於格羅頓學院和哈佛大學。他成長於伊迪絲華頓的世界。他的遠房表兄西奧多·羅斯福是美國總統，他娶了西奧多的姪女埃莉諾。 （布蘭茲先生對埃莉諾的刻畫入木三分，對這對夫婦的婚外情也處理得十分巧妙。）
儘管羅斯福擁有貴族般的自信，但他身上卻絲毫沒有傲慢的氣息。布蘭茲先生引用羅斯福的朋友雷·莫利的話說，羅斯福的魅力絕非虛張聲勢：“一旦有人觸怒他，他就會變得強硬、固執、足智多謀、毫不妥協。”
羅斯福隨時準備採取激進的措施來應對危險的局面。然而，他的直覺以及許多政策的最終結果往往是保守的。作為一名激進派，他維護了舊秩序——並且比傑斐遜之後任何一位總統都更有效地提升了美國的實力。
簡而言之，他是一個極其複雜的人物，而作者巧妙地處理了他的複雜性。羅斯福31歲時成為海軍助理部長，但八年後不幸罹患小兒麻痺症。布蘭茲先生並不十分認同這種說法，即羅斯福的患病與他因官僚機構對水手同性戀誘拐醜聞負有責任而感到羞愧有關。
無論如何，他當時身體嚴重殘疾，甚至一度癱瘓失禁。但到了1924年，也就是他患病三年後，他再次成為民主黨的一位重量級人物。他的復出部分歸功於他成功地掩蓋了自己的殘疾，部分歸功於當時新聞媒體不像現在這樣具有侵入性。但最重要的是，這要歸功於他驚人的決心。 1928年，他被選為紐約州州長；1932年，正值美國經濟危機最嚴重之際，他當選為美國總統。
勇氣、魅力、足智多謀的謀略以及不為人知的堅韌使他得以拯救美國資本主義，儘管正如他自己所說，結束大蕭條的是“戰爭贏家博士”，而不是“新政博士”。布蘭茲先生精闢地描述了羅斯福如何以極大的耐心引導美國民眾認識到法西斯主義的危險。然而，他對國際政治的處理則略顯不足，他秉持著傳統的觀點，認為在第二戰場的戰略爭論中，美國將軍們是對的，而溫斯頓·邱吉爾則被帝國懷舊情結蔽了雙眼。他將約翰·梅納德·凱恩斯貶為“英國知識分子”，認為凱因斯無權向美國總統提供建議，顯然他並不知道凱因斯是巴黎和會的重要參與者。
羅斯福決心摧毀帝國主義。布蘭茲先生或許過度強調了羅斯福之子艾利奧特錄製的一段深夜談話，在談話中，羅斯福聲稱邱吉爾和戴高樂正在密謀維護英法帝國。羅斯福的懷疑或許不無道理，但他比兒子更清楚大聯盟的種種曖昧之處。
他擁有同時代人中最敏銳的政治頭腦。同時，他也是一位精於權謀的大師，行事並非按計劃，而是憑藉直覺，並輔以豐富的經驗。
羅斯福是林肯之後最偉大的美國總統，他卓越的才能經歷了個人疾病、經濟災難和世界大戰的考驗。他利用一切可用的工具來領導美國，無論和平時期或戰爭時期：政黨、官僚機構、國會以及當時的媒體。無論誰贏得2008年的總統大選，都會發現這些槓桿已經鏽蝕、衰弱或扭曲。他的任務將是重新將總統職位與國家和世界聯繫起來——這需要富蘭克林·羅斯福的才華和品格，而正是這些才華和品格，才使美國從經濟困境的低谷走向了權力的巔峰。
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The man who saved his country, and the world
Oct 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition
From The Economist print edition
If he is to succeed, America’s next president needs to inherit at least a modicum of the character and talent that FDR brought to his tasks
“MY POLICY is as radical…as the constitution,” said FDR during the 1932 election campaign when he was accused of wanting to nationalise the utilities. In this impressive new biography, H.W. Brands, who has written books about Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin, stresses the contrast between Roosevelt’s aristocratic origins and his radical politics.Roosevelt’s ancestor, Philippe De La Noye, joined the Pilgrim Fathers on the Fortune, the next ship to arrive in Plymouth after the Mayflower. He was descended from Hudson Valley landed gentry and millionaire New York merchants, and went to Groton and Harvard. He grew up in the world of Edith Wharton. His fifth cousin, Theodore, was president of the United States, and he married Theodore’s niece, Eleanor. (Mr Brands paints an understanding portrait of Eleanor and handles the couple’s infidelities with tact.)
Though he had patrician self-confidence, there was no snobbery in Roosevelt. Mr Brands quotes FDR’s friend, Ray Moley, as saying that there was nothing flabby about his charm: “When crossed he is hard, stubborn, resourceful, relentless.”
Roosevelt was prepared to be radical to meet dangerous circumstances. Yet his instincts and the outcomes of many of his policies were often conservative. As a radical, he saved the old order—and advanced American power more than any other president since Jefferson.
In short, he was an extraordinarily complicated man, and the author copes skilfully with his complexity. Roosevelt became assistant secretary of the navy at 31 but eight years later was struck by polio. Mr Brands does not give too much credence to the theory that its onset was somehow connected with the shame Roosevelt felt about his bureaucratic responsibility for a scandal involving the homosexual entrapment of sailors.
He was in any event severely crippled, even for a time paralysed and incontinent. But by 1924, three years after he became ill, he had emerged again as one of the big beasts of the Democratic Party. His resurgence owed something to the success with which he concealed his disability, something to an age when journalism was less intrusive than it has since become. But more than anything else, it was due to his titanic determination. In 1928 he was elected governor of New York and in 1932, at the height of America’s economic crisis, he was elected president.
Courage, charm, resourceful cunning and a hidden hardness enabled him to save American capitalism, though, as he said himself, it was Dr Win-the-War, not Dr New Deal, that ended the Depression. Mr Brands is masterly in describing the patience with which FDR brought the country to understand the danger of fascism. He is a bit less sure in his handling of international politics, adopting the traditional view that, in the strategic arguments over the second front, the American generals were right and Winston Churchill deluded by imperial nostalgia. He dismisses John Maynard Keynes as an “English intellectual”, in whom it was impertinence to offer advice to an American president, apparently unaware that Keynes was a player at the Paris peace conference.
Roosevelt was determined to destroy imperialism. Mr Brands gives perhaps too much weight to a late night conversation recorded by his son Elliott, in which FDR claimed that Churchill and De Gaulle were conspiring to preserve the British and French empires. There may have been some warrant for Roosevelt’s suspicions, but he was more aware than his son of the ambiguities of the Grand Alliance.
He possessed the subtlest political mind of his generation. At the same time he was a master of point-to-point navigation, moving not by plan but by instinct, tempered by experience.
Roosevelt was the greatest American president since Lincoln, his colossal abilities tested by personal illness, economic catastrophe and world war. He used every tool to hand to direct the United States in peace and war: party, bureaucracy, Congress and the media of the day. Whoever wins the presidential election of 2008 will find those levers rusted, weakened or twisted. His task will be to reconnect the presidency to the country and to the world—something that will take the talent and character Franklin Roosevelt brought to lead America from the nadir of economic distress to the zenith of power.
Blanche Wiesen Cook
| |
|---|---|
| Born | April 20, 1941
New York City
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| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Historian and professor |
Notable work
| Eleanor Roosevelt, 3-volume biography |
Cook is the author of a three-volume biography about Eleanor Roosevelt: Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One 1884–1933 (published 1992); Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2, The Defining Years, 1933–1938 (2000); and Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939-1962 (2016). Volume One was awarded the 1992 Biography prize from the Los Angeles Times. [1] A New York Times review of the third volume called the entire biography a "rich portrait" of the "monumental and inspirational life of Eleanor Roosevelt."[2] NPR included the third volume in its "Best books of 2016."[3] Notably, the biography details a disputed affair between Eleanor Roosevelt and reporter Lorena Hickok.[4][5] (This affair has itself been the subject of other books.)[6]
Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884-1933 [Blanche Wiesen Cook] on Amazon.com. *
Amazon配送商品ならEleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2: The Defining Years, 1933-
Amazon.com: Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939-
Eleanor Roosevelt Monument - Wikipedia
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The Eleanor Roosevelt Monument is a memorial dedicated to Eleanor Roosevelt, located in New York City's Riverside Park, said to be the first monument dedicated to an American president's wife. At the monument's dedication in 1996,
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Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American politician, diplomat and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, having held the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her ... Wikipedia
Born: October 11, 1884, New York City, New York, United States
Died: November 7, 1962, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Full name: Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
She was fierce in her support of civil rights, acceptance of European refugees and the need to end empires. It is tempting to think that in a different era, Eleanor Roosevelt could have become president of the United States
羅斯福夫人回憶錄Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962 / 伊莉納・羅斯福著
羅斯福夫人回憶錄Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962 / 伊莉納・羅斯福著
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