Her [Eleanor Roosevelt] father was the love of her life. Her father always made her feel wanted, made her feel loved, where her mother made her feel, you know, unloved, judged harshly, never up to par. And she was her father's favorite, and her mother's unfavorite. So her father was the man that she went to for comfort in her imaginings.

Eleanor Roosevelt started off almost every early article she wrote, starting with, "My mother was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen." And I think her life was a constant and continual and lifelong contrast with her mother.

And even when success comes, as I am sure it will, bear in mind that there are more quiet and enviable joys than to be among the most sought after women at a ball.

She writes that one of the moments that she felt most useful was when her mother had a headache, and she would stroke her head and rub her forehead. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt's entire life was dedicated to two things: (one) making it better for all people, people in trouble and in need, like her family.

And if you look at pictures of Eleanor between 1918 and 1921, she becomes anorexic. She really loses a tremendous amount of weight. That's when her teeth really go bad. It's a terrible, terrible time for her. And she has five children, ranging in age from three to 10. It's an emotionally terrible ordeal.

And you can really see in all of these issues that are priorities for Eleanor Roosevelt, where the compromises are painful, the compromises are hard, and the difficulties between them really begin to loom very large by 1936, by 1938.

Politics is not an isolated, individualist adventure. Women really need to emerge as a power to be the countervailing power to the men. And Eleanor Roosevelt's really the dynamo and the spearhead of that effort.