No Ordinary Time

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

By: Doris Kearns Goodwin

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 39 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize Winner, History, 1995

No Ordinary Time describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world.

Using diaries, interviews, and White House records of the president's and first lady's comings and goings, Goodwin paints an intimate portrait of the daily conduct of the presidency during wartime and the Roosevelts' extraordinary constellation of friends, advisers, and family.

Bringing to bear the tools of both history and biography, No Ordinary Time relates the unique story of how Franklin Roosevelt led the nation to victory against seemingly insurmountable odds and, with Eleanor's essential help, forever changed the fabric of American society.

©1995 Doris Kearns Goodwin, All Rights Reserved. (P)2011 Simon & Schuster

Goodwin brings the people and challenges to life!

Would you listen to No Ordinary Time again? Why?

Once again, Doris Kearns Goodwin brings history to life through exemplary research and a way of telling the facts that makes you feel you are there. Nelson Runger made each character distinct and true. It is hard to believe the state our country was in when FDR took office: all of the domestic problems we had and how unprepared we were for war. I will go back again and again to impress more facts on my memory. With his great political mind and her great heart they brought us through to victory although he died prior to VJ Day.

Who was your favorite character and why?

It is too hard to pick just one.

Which character – as performed by Nelson Runger – was your favorite?

Winston Churchill

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Could not possibly listen to it in one sitting.

Incredible Research

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I highly recommend. I learned much about the mood of our country at this time period and the challenges that FDR had to face from home as well as abroad. Aslo learned much about Eleanor Roosevelt's importance.

What about Nelson Runger’s performance did you like?

The book is big, takes some time, but well read, you could almost hear the character's voice coming through Nelson Runger's naration.

ER revealed

ER from a new view. Changed my view on ER and a better look into the world of FDR. A winning combo.

Weighty

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Kearns-Goodwin knows how to tell a story and this doesn't disappoint in narrative. Highly recommended for the detailed insights it provides into the unusual lives of the main characters AND for the picture it paints of a time in the not too distant past that in many ways was so very different from our own. Even as it confirms ongoing themes of our social debate, it's just incredible to see how much the collective view of what's right and what's wrong has changed. Also the reader grows to understand how the complementary personalities of Eleanor and Franklin made the whole so much stronger than the parts.My main criticism of the audiobook is that it goes into so much depth in so many particulars as to leave the listener's mind to wander from time to time. Taken a couple of hours at a time, it took most of a month to get through. If I'd read it I would probably have skimmed several parts.

Brilliant, reads like a novel

What does Nelson Runger bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His reading is lively, engergetic and engaging. He reads history like a novel. Very entertaining as are all his books.

Any additional comments?

Goodwin (as always) is an entertaining, yet fully informed historian. This book is as close to "un-put-downable" as a biography/history book is likely to get. Her abilty to grasp the interesting coupled with the important is equaled by few.

"No Ordinary Time" is Extraordinary Story

This story of the Roosevelts personal and political contributions to American history is extremely powerful and inspiring. I was mesmerized.

Outstanding

One of the best bio's written, comprehensive, filled with little unknown facts. a super read that maintains interest!

Phenomenal

A must read for anyone interested in how our past as a country, has determined our today!!

Doris is my history teacher

The history class I took in high school was pathetic. The school year was almost over when we rushed through the Civil War, WWI and WWII. I read Team of Rivals and was mesmerized. I'm certainly not an expert on the Civil War now, but I feel like I have a much better understanding of it. I was hoping No Ordinary Time would do the same, and it did not disappoint. I learned so much about WWII and what was going on at home. I felt like I got to know Franklin and Eleanor. The research that went into this is exceptional, and it is presented in a way that is so compelling I didn't want to stop listening. Thanks, Doris, for being the most interesting history teacher I've ever had!

Eleanor, I Hardly Knew Ye!

This wonderful book discusses WWII from a much more personal perspective than any I've read. While FDR was the politician and brain of the country at this time, Eleanor was the heart and conscience. She discovered her husband's affair when she was in her mid-thirties and thereafter pretty much went her own way, to the great advantage of social causes in the United States. She was a Civil Rights, Women's Rights, and Labor Rights activist throughout these years and prompted profound advances by pressuring her husband about these causes in the White House. I had no idea.

Nelson Runger's narration was excellent. He does a credible imitation of FDR and Churchill, and his delivery for Eleanor was subtly singsong and high pitched.