The Wars of the Roosevelts; The Ruthless Rise of America's Greatest Political Family

New York: Harper, 2016. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. x, [4], 609, [1] pages. Genealogy Table. Author's Note. Illustrations. Archival Collections. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. William J. Mann (born August 7, 1963) is an American novelist, biographer, and Hollywood historian best known for his studies of Hollywood and the American film industry. His 2006 biography of Katharine Hepburn, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly, that gave it a starred review. Kate was also named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2006 by The New York Times. A provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America's greatest and most influential families-the Roosevelts-exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries. Drawing on historical documents and interviews, Mann paints an elegant, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts' rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself-in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient. Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her Uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott, for political expediency. Mann also brings into focus TR's children, whose stories propelled the family rivalry but have never before been fully chronicled, as well as her illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann. Elliott Mann embodied the American Dream, rising to middle-class prosperity and enjoying one of the very few happy, long-term marriages in the Roosevelt saga.