I think that Eleanor Roosevelt really learned about the limits of power and influence from Arthurdale. She could not make some things happen. And she particularly learned that she could not, just because she was nominally in charge, she could not change people's hearts and minds; that a very long process of education would result before race was on the national agenda. And it really did move her into the racial justice arena with both feet. She came out fighting.

I think FDR was very dashing and charming and debonair, and probably reminded her of her father. A great bon-vivant. He loved to party. He loved to sing. He loved to have fun. And he wrote beautiful letters, just as her father did, which - alas and alack - Eleanor Roosevelt destroyed. But she refers to his beautiful letters. And she was charmed by him.

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.

On international relations, Eleanor Roosevelt really takes a great shocking leadership position on the World Court. In fact, it amuses me. The very first entry in her FBI file begins in 1924, when Eleanor Roosevelt supports American's entrance into the World Court. And the World Court comes up again and again - '33, '35. In 1935, Eleanor Roosevelt goes on the air; she writes columns; she broadcast three, four times to say the US must join the World Court.

And in her [Eleanor Roosevelt] letters, she writes the most, you know, fanciful letters: when we are together, and when we are reunited, and you know, I will be your surrogate wife. Of course she doesn't use that word, but I will be the mother to my brothers, and I will be your primary love.

It's interesting to me that really one of the first things she [Eleanor Roosevelt]did as First Lady was to collect her father's letters and publish a book called The Letters of My Father, essentially, hunting big game, The Letters of Elliott Roosevelt. And it really was an act of redemption, really one of her first acts of redemption as she entered the White House. She was going to redeem her father's honor. And publishing his letters, reconnecting with her childhood really fortified her to go on into the difficult White House years.

I mean, in the campaign of '24 and in '28 and '32, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt insists that women have equal floor space. And this is a great victory over time. Then she wants women represented in equal numbers as men. And she wants the women to name the delegates. And the men want to name the delegates. Well, Eleanor is absolutely furious. And because they don't want her to walk away in 1924, she wins. And this is a great political victory. She has floor space equal to the men, and she has the right to name the women.