
Yet the two were dependent upon each other totally to validate and explicate their lives. After ER found out about the Mercer affair in 1918, she never again shared FDR's bedroom. The FDR-ER marriage was atypical: the love of a brother and sister perhaps, but not of a husband and wife. His affair with Lucy Mercer is examined in detail from its first moments during the First World War to its resumption in the later years of WWII (facilitated by FDR's daughter Anne) yet, no reporter ever mentioned the liaiason. Not one photo was ever taken showing FDR as a victim of polio, unable to move his legs at all. In one sense, the volume is an example of how press coverage of the Presidency has changed. Using dozens of interviews, diary citations, private correspondence, oral histories, and more traditional sources, the reader becomes a fly on the wall in the White House from FDR's first inauguration in 1932 (with references to earlier times as well for both FDR and ER) to his death in 1945. It is hard to imagine popular history being better-or more definitive.
