So she [Eleanor Roosevelt] is an amazing First Lady. What other First Lady in U.S. history has ever written a book to criticize her husband's policies?

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.

I think that, very often there's a pain that's just too painful to touch. You'll break apart. And I think her mother's death and disappearance and abandonment was something she just never could deal with. Eleanor Roosevelt, when she's really very unwell in 1936, she takes to her bed. She has a mysterious flu.

Well, the reality of her father was that he was a very diseased alcoholic, who died at the age of 34. And one always has to pause to wonder how much you have to drink to die at 34. And he was a really tragic father. I mean, he was absolutely unreliable. He was absolutely involved with various people. He had outside families, outside children, outside wives. He made his wife's life miserable. And she [Eleanor Roosevelt]ignored all of his faults and retained this sense of him as the perfect father.

Her mother died at the age of 29, essentially turning her face to the wall and deciding to die. And so we can only imagine the agony she felt. And Eleanor Roosevelt really wanted to make her mother happier, and - and to make her live, you know, make her want to live. And there's something about, you know, when your mother dies, this sense of abandonment. I think Eleanor Roosevelt had a lifelong fear of abandonment and sense of abandonment after her parents' death.

And during the campaign of 1936, she writes that she and her brother would always rather be out doing things when they're sick, rather than take to their beds. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt always responded to pain by doing more, by doing something, by being active. And I think she just couldn't bear to look at her childhood grief. And she didn't.

I think Eleanor Roosevelt always had a most incredible comfort writing letters. I mean, she was in the habit of writing letters. And that's where she allowed her fantasies to flourish. That's where she allowed her emotions to really evolve. And that's where she allowed herself to express herself really fully, and sometimes whimsically, very often romantically. And it really starts with her letters to her father, who is lifelong her primary love.