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I took a long time reading this book because it was like time travel, like seeing into the past. NO ORDINARY TIME is a marvelously researched and rendered account of perhaps the most important and influential marriage in American history. Franklin and Eleanor's relationship is fascinating, so complicated and extraordinary, and yet so human, and in its own way, familiar.

Eleanor, to her eternal credit and the benefit of our country, was a tireless champion for women and African-Americans and the poor. Franklin was as well, to a lesser degree, but his calculus was much more complicated than hers. The book features story after story of people experiencing one kind of social injustice or another and somehow getting word directly or indirectly to Eleanor, who would be outraged. And at that precise moment, Franklin is having cocktails with his friends (this was an important part of his process for managing the work stress caused by, you know, the Depression and World War II).

Then Eleanor, in high dudgeon, comes in, completely focused on some poor person's plight and totally buzzkills the party. Franklin's annoyed. They argue. Often (though not always) he agrees to take some action. Ultimately, he appreciates her awareness of what's happening in the country, and her ability to go places he couldn't really go, both because he was president and because of his polio.

Goodwin's writing is marvelously efficient, thorough and insightful. Her eye for detail and organization is just about perfect. She admires and empathizes with Franklin, Eleanor and the people around them, but she also sees their flaws and holds them accountable for their mistakes and misjudgments, while also contextualizing them. She details, for example, Franklin's decision to listen to the voices in his cabinet and military who called for interning Japanese-Americans as perhaps the most glaring example. (That policy not only made fishwrap of the Constitution, it went against his own values.)

I savored this book, took the last pages slowly because I didn't want it to end, didn't want Franklin to die, suddenly, while visiting his mistress. But he did. And Eleanor found that out, and had to live with that as part of her memory of him.

There's a wonderful scene at the end of the book where Eleanor is taking Bess Truman on a tour of the White House. Eleanor doesn't seem to notice that the new first lady is quietly appalled that the place is in such disrepair. Keeping up the president's residence is apparently part of the first lady's traditional responsibilities, but between traveling, writing a daily newspaper column, and advocating for Americans who had no one else of her stature or influence on their side, Eleanor Roosevelt never quite found the time to keep house, even the White House.