"Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth is the saga of the decades-long feud (marked by some surprising periods of detente) between the two most forceful and interesting women of the Roosevelt family. Theodore's niece Eleanor (in some ways his political heir) and his witty and flamboyant daughter Alice seem almost to have been destined for rivalry since childhood. Eleanor was a truly great woman and Alice merely a grande dame although in a class by herself, but Alice (especially in old age) could charm and enchant whenever she chose to in ways that Eleanor could only dream of doing.
(Plus, this is just one of the cleverest book titles ever!)"
Publisher Nan A. Talese
Publication Date 2015-03-31
Section New Hardcover - Biography
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780385536011
A lively and provocative double biography of first cousins Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, two extraordinary women whose tangled lives provide a sweeping look at the twentieth century.
When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his beautiful and flamboyant daughter was transformed into "Princess Alice," arguably the century's first global celebrity. Thirty-two years later, her first cousin Eleanor moved into the White House as First Lady. Born eight months and twenty blocks apart from each other in New York City, Eleanor and Alice spent a large part of their childhoods together and were far more alike than most historians acknowledge.
But their politics and temperaments couldn't have been more distinct. Do-gooder Eleanor was committed to social justice but hated the limelight; acid-tongued Alice, who became the wife of philandering Republican congressman Nicholas Longworth, was an opponent of big government who gained notoriety for her cutting remarks (she famously quipped that dour President Coolidge “looked like he was weaned on a pickle”). While Eleanor revolutionized the role of First Lady with her outspoken passion for human rights, Alice made the most of her insider connections to influence politics, including doing as much to defeat the League of Nations as anyone in elective office.
The cousins themselves liked to play up their oil-and-water relationship. “When I think of Frank and Eleanor in the White House I could grind my teeth to powder and blow them out my nose,” Alice once said. In the 1930s they even wrote opposing syndicated newspaper columns and embarked on competing nationwide speaking tours. Blood may be thicker than water, but when the family business is politics, winning trumps everything.
Vivid, intimate, and stylishly written, Hissing Cousins finally sets this relationship center stage, revealing the contentious bond between two political trailblazers who short-circuited the rules of gender and power, each in her own way.
