Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt walked out of the White House more than the president's widow. As a nationally syndicated columnist, popular lecturer, author, party leader, and social activist, Roosevelt assured her friends that 'my voice will not be silent'. Vowing not to be a 'workless worker in a world of work', Roosevelt dedicated her unstinting energy to 'winning the peace'. The 410 documents in ""The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Volume 1: The Human Rights Years, 1945-1948"", collected from 263 archives in 50 states and 9 nations, chronicle not only Roosevelt's impact on American politics and the United Nations, but also the serious treatment she received from those in power. They disclose the inner workings of Truman's first administration, the United Nations, and the major social and political movements of the postwar world. They also reveal the intense struggles Roosevelt's correspondents and advisors had confronting a war-scarred world, the conflicting advice they gave her, and the material Roosevelt reviewed and the people she consulted while determining her own course of action. Using a wide variety of material - letters, speeches, columns, debates, committee transcripts, telegrams, and diary entries - this first of five volumes presents a representative selection of the actions Eleanor Roosevelt took to define, implement, and promote human rights and the impact her work had at home and abroad. Readers may disagree over various decisions she made, language that she used, or the priorities she established. Yet her influence is unquestioned.

In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt served as chairwoman of the United Nations committee to create this declaration of moral conscience, now used by Amnesty International as their founding document. This hardcover edition contains the international document in six languages: English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic.

Recently named "Woman of the Century" in a survey conducted by the National Women's Hall of Fame, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote her hugely popular syndicated column "My Day" for over a quarter of that century, from 1936 to 1962. This collection brings together for the first time in a single volume the most memorable of those columns, written with singular wit, elegance, compassion, and insight,everything from her personal perspectives on the New Deal and World War II to the painstaking diplomacy required of her as chair of the United Nations Committee on Human Rights after the war to the joys of gardening at her beloved Hyde Park home. To quote Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "What a remarkable woman she was! These sprightly and touching selections from Eleanor Roosevelt's famous column evoke an extraordinary personality."