The GREAT BIG Book of the Roosevelts

"The Roosevelts - An Intimate History" by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns   Alfred A. Knopf   502 pages   $60 ($60)

This truly is what publishers call a coffee table book.  Attach legs to it and you could use it as a coffee table, albeit it would only hold one drink and a small can of peanuts.  It is 11 in. by 9 and weighs between 2.5 and 3 lbs.  Our scales are a little iffy. 

The three stars of this tome are Teddy, Eleanor and FDR himself.  Bit players include the family's Designated Brat, Alice.  Happily she only occupies one chapter - she got plenty of attention in life, why drag it out all of these years later?

The book is lavishly illustrated and the many pictures give a real portrait of the times in which they were shot.

The one thing I'd not realized before heaving this book up into my lap was the depth of FDR's involvement with the small town now named Warm Springs, GA.  It was once called Buchanan, but with the spreading of the news of the 88 degrees all-year-round springs and the arrival of sickly tourists, it was decided to give it a spiffier name.

FDR first stayed at the "ramshackle" Meriweather Inn in 1924 and by 1927 he liked it there so much that he bought it and renamed it Georgia Hall.  It was about to fall down, so it was rebuilt.  H had a separate cottage named the Little White House for himself.  In April 1945, he died there.

Another local hotel, the Hotel Warm Springs B & B Inn was built in 1907 and some of the antique furnishings today  are furniture from Eleanor's Val-Kill furniture factory.  It has hosted such diverse luminaries as the King and Queen of Spain, the Queen of Mexico and Bette Davis. 

Warm Springs was popular with all sorts of people for "the cure" of the waters.  It was particularly popular with polio victims and the funding to help them evolved into the March of Dimes.  Franklin loved being there for the freedom to drive his handicapped car while there - to events, out for an ice cream  and picnics with his paramour. 

O/T  In 2003 a panel of medical experts ventured that FDR had had Guilliame-Barr, not polio at all.