Cook is professor of history and of women’s studies, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her biography of Roosevelt, published in 1992, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and was on the New York Times bestseller list.
Based on 10 years of research, the biography draws on many new sources, including recently opened archives, FBI and State Department documents, and letters from friends. Cook discusses Roosevelt’s difficult childhood, her evolving political views on women’s suffrage and racism, her role in the passage of social and labor legislation, her unorthodox marriage to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and her intimate friendships with both men and women.