I've always admired Eleanor Roosevelt and after finishing this book, I think I idolize her. Her legacy with the United Nations and her tireless work for human rights and dignity are as strong as her husband's legacy with the New Deal. She decried America's apathy toward democracy and worried that if we didn't foster and cultivate it, we couldn't protect it either. What a great president she would have made. She was committed to her role as public servant and worried that democracy had been overtaken in the 1960 election when the candidate was selected by the Convention and not the constituents, saying "yet boss rule can exist only where there is widespread indifference....and having committed to the machine, the delegate can only carry out instructions. He remains deaf to the voice of his constituents." She also decried political conventions because a party with "noise, bands and balloons, to the accompaniment of the manufactured and synthetic excitement of parades, is to strip one of the most important features of our system of its dignity and meaning." I highlighted heavily and could go on, but I won't.

Her active role within the United Nations gave her a global perspective on politics and peoples worldwide and she wrote a daily newspaper column on these topics, beginning in 1935 until the early 1960s. Though she wrote her autobiography 50 years ago, her words are as timely today as they were then. This should be required reading for all Americans who need to turn off "reality TV" and live in the real world.