This book presents various My Day columns that Eleanor wrote, starting in the late 1930's through 1962. They are presented with historical and personal information that places them in context and provides a sampling of her thoughts, opinions, and actions. It took awhile to get through the book because some of the reading was heavy - discussing wars and arms races and racial and religious prejudices in the U.S., etc., but it was lightened with anecdotes about the daily lives of the Roosevelts. My favorite was serving hotdogs to the Queen of England at a picnic.

Eleanor really tells it like she sees it, about and from decades of political involvement. She was definitely for the betterment of people and their situations, and the responsible use of personal freedoms, as applied all over the world. The only thing she was silent on that surprised me was the Japanese concentration camps during WWII, but that may have been because she was a First Lady at the time. Apparently, "they" didn't want her mucking up the presidency too much during those times.

The book as a whole gives a nice, longitudinal view of U.S. and world politics/events for a good thirty year period, with some influences from the past, given that both Eleanor and FDR were related to Teddy Roosevelt and could comment on that time period and the then-current politics. You really do get the idea that what we talk about in politics today isn't new - we've been going in cycles for a long time.