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Summary: This book is a winner
Review: What a wealth of information and it is provided in an easily read manner that I have greatly enjoyed. Franklin and Eleanor are tremendously diverse and greatly respected American hero's. Thank goodness that our great country had their combination of efforts to guide us through the Great Depression and World War Two. Doris Kearns Goodwin deserves and achieves great reconition for this wonderful book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Typically I don't read historical non-fiction but was drawn to this book by the fact that it won the Pulitzer. It is a truly engrossing, wonderful book, and I found myself pressing it on friends as a "must read." While I knew the basic "facts" of WW II, I was astounded to discover just how easily the outcome could have been different had Franklin Roosevelt not stuck to his guns. This book did leave me with less respect for Eleanor Roosevelt--while she accomplished so much in the public arena, she came across in the book as a poor mother. Doris Goodwin writes beautifully. Sometimes you feel like you are in the same room with the people she's describing.
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Summary: Great insight into why WWII events happened
Review: I have been a fan of Doris Kearns Goodwin after hearing her speak at a leadership conference. All of her descriptions of events were built around the people that made the key decisions or influenced the events to occur. This Pulitzer Prize book is equally well researched on both of the book's characters, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. In reading the book, you feel like you are actually living in the White House during the events leading up to and during the Depression and World War II. The author is so thorough in the details gathered from her research from diaries and letters, that the book is not a fast read. However it is a fascinating portrait of two extraordinary individuals that led our nation through extraordinary events and personally influenced historical change in the way we live as Americans that forever changed our fabric. I highly recommend to any Franklin or Eleanor Roosevelt reader...through this work, you cannot understand one without knowing the other.
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Summary: Can't Put It Down!
Review: This book was so good, I could not stop reading it!! It's so well-written that it is like reading a story by a friend. Besides the history lesson, I gained so much admiration for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It was such a trying time in our history and I felt like I was there by reading this book. It is also scary how similar the events in this book are to the current events in the world. This is a great book!
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Summary: No Ordinary Historian, Either!
Review: I have been a fan of the Roosevelts since I discovered them as a teenager thirty years ago. I have read many, many books on them, most notably Burns's Roosevelt biography and the excellent set on Eleanor by Blanche Cook. I have also read many books on the various political and social aspects of the Roosevelt years. It was with great interest that I purchased this book when it was released. I knew of Mrs. Goodwin from her work and subsequent book on President Johnson. This book offers a unique perspective on the Roosevelts, namely their lives during the second World War. While not a daily diary of their activities, the book succeeds in illustrating not only significant public appearances, but also routines in their daily lives. Mrs. Goodwin has a particular talent for writing in a style that is extremely readable without being simplistic. The overall writing style is sympathetic toward the Roosevelts without neglect of critism or their individual weaknesses. This book was one of the very few I read that I couldn't put down until finished. I have reread it, and loaned it out, so many times that I was forced to buy a second copy. Mrs. Goodwin has the peculiar talent of making history 'live' through writing, in the same manner that Barbara Tuchman did. This book is great reading for those who don't ordinarily like reading history. I only wish Mrs. Goodwin would spend less time on television and more on writing books!
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Summary: No Ordinary Biography
Review: Doris Kearns Goodwin has given us a treasure in "No Ordinary Time," a vivid, intimate, informative, and readable biography of FDR and Eleanor during the WWII years, as well as a history of the time itself. This book is doubly relevant now, because since 9/11/01, we too are living in anything but an "ordinary time." We don't know what is going to happen next, and neither does anyone else...including the White House. In their time, neither Franklin nor Eleanor knew what was coming next. The anxiety and weight of responsibility certainly took a toll on both of them. Kearns is unabashedly a fan of both FDR and Eleanor, but this does not prevent her from revealing their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Highly recommend.
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Summary: Try Something Different
Review: I usually read mostly fiction, and I bought this book after reading about it in Oprah magazine (it's one of Judy Mueller's favorites). I agree with a lot of what other reviewers have said about this book, and especially of Doris Kearns Goodwin's considerable talent for telling history in the most fascinating and unsentimental way. What I'd like to add for those who may be considering the book is this: if you usually read fiction and you are looking for something new and utterly interesting, get this book. It's well written, researched and just a great read. I was sad when I finished it, like you sometimes feel after you finish a great book of fiction, when you feel like you miss the characters. (Has this happened to you?) Also, the topic of the book - fighting a war against a fascist aggressor - from the POV of the homefront is very timely when you consider the "war" we're fighting now, and how Americans are again being asked to set aside our isolationist tendencies and work to make the world safer. Having read this book, I feel I've got a lot more perspective about the situation.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing peek behind the doors of the Whitehouse
Review: World War II brings up images of grand scale encounters and monumental decisions that changed the face of the planet and all of human history. Kearns Goodwin takes us into the intimate spaces of the White House to show us the complex relationships, odd personalities, and ultimately very normal people who guided us through this monumental time. Eleanor Roosevelt especially came into focus for me. Most histories of the White House tells us what these people did. Doris Kearns Goodwin shows us who these people were.
Rating: 
Summary: Readable, Unsentimental, and Thorough
Review: A fine work within its boundries, but the author's laudible concentration on primary sources has kept her from getting a consensus of other writers about the period. The worst gaffe is that she perpetuates the view that only Jews were sent to Hitler's extermination camps, when actually Gypsies, homosexuals, communists and others were also exterminated like termites.
She knows little about war, and sometimes that is a problem, as when she seems to think the advantage of the German tanks was that they were more comfortable, or when she perpetuates the myth of Germany beating Poland by having tanks gun down cavalry.
No author knows everything, so with those reservations, I recommend it strongly to anyone who wants to know how the US became what it is today.
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Summary: UMMM
Review: As a student who has been forced to read this book for school, I must say it's not as bad as I expected it to be. Sure, it takes me a whopping twenty minutes to read ten freakin pages (and this isn't the ONLY book I have for summer reading), but it's actually a lot more interesting than just reading my history textbook (yeah I have to read a chapter of that TOO this summer!) because it tells history as a story that is much eastier to relate to. In conclusion, summer reading sucks and teachers want us to have no life!
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