Erin ’s Reviews > Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt > Status Update

Franklin assumed he was catching a cold and crawled under the covers. His symptoms steadily worsened. His back aches badly, his legs became numb and then completely immobile.

In 1919 radio remained a wireless substitute for telegraphy; it had yet to become a broadcast medium.

The Roosevelt name was the most famous in American political life.

Despite the progressivism of the era and of the Wilson administration, women in Washington were essentially confined to traditional roles.

The blatant racist politics of the South alienated voters elsewhere, putting Southern presidential hopefuls in an impossible bind.

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were far less enamored of the capitalists status quo. Each believed that capitalism was running away with democracy, and that millions of Americans were being strangled by corporate greed.

People of Theodore Roosevelt's class didn't usually enter politics. Politics was seen as grubby, low and rough and its practitioners were not those with whom gentlemen associated.

For many months Franklin disguised his growing attachment to Eleanor. Being related made the deception easier

Eleanor was a Roosevelt before she married Franklin. Her father was Elliott Roosevelt, brother of Theodore.

Since the 1850s the Democrats had elected precisely 1 president, Grover Cleveland.