Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt & Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Author: Marc Peyser & Timothy Dwyer
Stars: 3
Review by: MandyApgar
Incredible in its beginning chapters, sagging at the end, this recounts the decades long war of words and gestures between the two infamous cousins. Alice was the daughter of the indomitable Theodore, whose first wife (named Alice) and mother died almost immediately after the birth of his first daughter. Launched into grief, TR spent little time in his daughter's early life until he remarried and his new wife, Edith, insisted on taking in the young girl. But her personality was already set - awed and afraid by her father into a sense of flippancy. Alice spent many of her early years with her cousin Anna, known as Eleanor, the daughter of her father's n'er do well alcoholic brother. Eleanor's childhood was infamously awful, and she too became drawn to her "big bear" of an uncle who wanted nothing more for her than to swallow up her problems in one of his giant hugs. That is, until Franklin came around. 

As a teenager, Alice was a charming debutante, The Princess as she was known to the world's press, basking in the adoration she gleaned off her father and from her enjoyment at tormenting the White House press with her wild lifestyle. Sending her charming 6th cousin Franklin to ask Eleanor to dance at a family party was little more than a lark, but when it later turned into marriage Eleanor still seemed to many the eternal doormat. It wasn't until Franklin's political ambitions began to ape her father's (and compete with those of her brother and husband) that the remarks became more public and cutting. FDR's ascendancy to the presidency has often been credited to being blessed with a wife who came into her own just as he nearly snapped, and the book is yet another account of that. Finding her life's work in good works, Eleanor became a force of her own. Alice was a more behind the scenes political manipulator, charming officials at her parties. The two clashed frequently on parenting, politics, anything really (provided there was a reporter near enough to quote Alice, which she usually made sure there was) but after FDR's passing the acidity began to leave the relationship. Family tragedy and loss once again bound the two women together (although without TR and FDR the book lost a strong drive and in the final portions wasn't nearly as well written or animated) in their final years. Eleanor passed in the sixties, her funeral attended to by a mass of dignitaries despite the fact that she had repeatedly insisted that all would forget her once she was gone. Alice, impish to the end, died at home in 1980. Her final act was to stick out her tongue.