A provocative biography of the Roosevelt family draws on family secrets and complex rivalries to argue that the Roosevelts' rise to power was driven by a series of inside competitions that were witnessed firsthand by an increasingly begrudging Eleanor Roosevelt.

Drawing on historical documents and interviews with the long-silent 'illegitimate' branch of the family, celebrity biographer William J. Mann paints a group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts' rise to power and prestige was driven by a series of intense personal contests that at times devolved into blood sport. Eleanor Roosevelt experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott -- Theodore's brother and bitter rival -- for political expediency. This 'worshipful niece,' Mann contends, in fact bore a grudge against TR for the rest of her life. A new understanding of Eleanor, as well as of her relationship with Franklin, emerges. Mann also brings into focus Eleanor's cousins, TR's children -- Alice, Ted, and Kermit -- whose stories propelled the family rivalry. We also learn the story of Eleanor's illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, who inherited his family's ambition and skills without th

The award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America's greatest and most influential families--the Roosevelts--exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries with his signature cinematic flair.Drawing on previously hidden historical documents and interviews with the long-silent "illegitimate" branch of the family, William J. Mann paints an elegant, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts' rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest that at times devolved into blood sport. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself, of social Darwinism at its most ruthless--in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient. Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her