Robin GerberRecensioni

A book about Barbie and her maker, Ruth Handler. This is a neat book in terms of that it was neatly portioned out. I was able to read the book over a 2 week period without missing a beat. Nothing spectacular.

The book did focus much more on Ruth Handler than Barbie. It told a story without getting emotionally involved. After reading the book, I don't feel anything special toward Ruth Handler. Neither did I throughout the book.

Robin Gerber’s alternate history novel is based on an intriguing premise: as he takes the stage to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952, Adlai Stevenson suffers a fatal heart attack. Facing a fractious convention and a politically formidable Republican nominee, the party’s leaders turn to Eleanor Roosevelt and ask her to serve as their standard-bearer. After reluctantly accepting the offer, Roosevelt begins a spirited campaign with the help of a rising young campaign manager and the devotion of her many passionate supporters. Yet in addition to facing long odds and a politically formidable Republican nominee, she must also undertake an additional challenge that no nominee before her has ever had to address: that of convincing Americans that the nation is indeed ready for a female president.

Like science fiction in general, alternate history is a genre dominated by the interests and attitudes of men. Because of this, many scenarios focus on wars or the decisions made by political leaders. This is what makes Gerber’s book so refreshingly different. Her focus on Eleanor Roosevelt offers a nice change of pace, supplying an imaginative speculation of the type that distinguishes the best works of the genre. Having written a previous, nonfiction book on Roosevelt, , she has an easy familiarity with the particulars of her life, which allows Gerber to develop her into a well-defined character. Yet this book is about more than just Eleanor Roosevelt. Published in 2008, it advances a none-too-subtle argument that the time has come for a woman to be elected president – a point that Gerber makes explicit with a chance encounter between Roosevelt and a young Hillary Rodham.

Though such a detail may date the novel somewhat, Gerber’s novel transcends this point to offer a dramatic narrative of a election that might have been. Based as much as possible on the words and actions of the people at the times, it does not sacrifice plausibility in speculating on what a Eleanor Roosevelt candidacy might have looked like, nor does it sacrifice readability to offer a dry recitation of details. Though some of her other characters are not as well defined as her central protagonist, Gerber has written an enjoyable book that is well worth the time of fans of political novels and alternate history tales.

Chances are, if you’re sixty years old or younger, you’ve owned, played with, and cherished at least one beloved Barbie doll. I owned loads of them when I was a child, and they played a large role in my growing-up years.

“Playing Barbies” was a favorite pastime growing up. My sister and I would set up a Barbie town square, containing a hairdresser, hospital, clothing store, schoolhouse, and more. We each had our handmade homes showcasing our own styles, on each end of the hallway and spent days setting everything up. We wrote out storylines of who would do what, who’d fall in love, who’d start a career, etc. Ahhh… those were the days. I can’t express how much fun we had, or how the Barbie town strewn and stretched across half the house drove our neat-freak mother half-crazy. I look back fondly, with a smile stretched wide, over the time my sister and I spent with Barbie and her friends.

Just as I treasured my Barbies, I’ll treasure Barbie Forever. Wow—what a pearl! From the beautiful front cover to the detailed timeline on the back pages, this quality, hardback coffee table book brings so many memories to the surface. I enjoyed reminiscing over Barbie’s many looks, learning how she came to be, and reflecting on the impact she’s made on so many lives. I’ve learned so much about this American icon and the creator behind her.

I’m glad the pages are sturdy and thick, because I’m sure this coffee table book will be thumbed through for many years to come. The photos capture the past sixty years and the history of this classic doll is priceless.

First line (Chapter One): There are endless ways to play with Barbie, and for sixty years, girls have loved the fantasies that the doll helps them create.
Source: I received a complimentary copy from the publisher through BookPleasures. I was under no obligation to post a positive review.

I absolutely loved Katharine Graham's autobiography, [Personal History] when I read it a decade ago so when I saw this book on the library shelves it called to me. It was lots of fun to relive Graham's autobiography through Gerber's focus on leadership qualities. This is a brief book comparatively and stays fairly close to the topic of leadership. Her personal traits and the growth she achieve during her career are studied. I think it would have been more meaningful as a leadership book, though, if leadership had been spelled out a little more clearly. It's there, but sort of hidden in her life/career story. I would have liked it to be a bit more explicit.½

This book was our November book club selection. The overall feel from the group was that it made an interesting what if scenario, but it seemed to get bogged down by to much detail but not enough depth in the believability of the idea of Eleanor Roosevelt running against Eisenhower. There were some good discussions on politics of the time and present day. We did agree that Roosevelt and Clinton are both women you either love or you hate not much middle ground. It was also interesting to see what parts had some basis to history and what parts were fictionalized.

This is an excellent short biography of the woman who created and sold Barbie. It is also the story of a woman who built her own company from the ground up when business was a males world. It is the story of Ruth Handler and her husband Elliot. Elliot was the designer who had the ideas and the skills to bring a project to fruition. Ruth was the business brains. Elliot created. Ruth sold. Together they built Mattel into a huge conglomerate.

It is also the story of their rise and fall. Ruth was successfully prosecuted by the SEC, pre Martha Stewart, and served time as a convicted felon. It is also the story of a breast cancer survivor who used her business building know-how to create a build a second company devoted to helping breast cancer survivors regain their dignity and looks.

I expects this to be a dry dull book and was so pleasantly surprised to find it very readable and exciting. What A Woman! I would have liked to meet her.

Probably mostly because I'm another idolizer of ER, I LOVED this book that I happened across on the remainder shelf. I also particularly appreciate the historical authenticity — nobody real was made to do anything out of character, real published documents were used as they are, I note at least 2 blurbs in my copy by figures named in the book, and I can vouch for Gerber's spot-on descriptions of Val Kill and its atmosphere.

I was born about 6 months after the novel ends, into a family where I grew up thinking of Ike as another kind of grandfather and was shocked to learn in 1960 that he wasn't President for life. I love (and hate) thinking how my life might have been different if, as in the novel, we'd had this style of Presidential campaigning all those years earlier. Yep, I think Gerber depicts the kind of campaign Obama ran, which has changed our country forever, and that Hillary, much as I wanted to see a woman win, never could have.

This is a well-written story of Ruth Handler's life from her childhood being raised by a sister, to her success at founding and growing Mattel, to her legal problems associated with money mishandling at the company, to her reincarnation as the creator of the Nearly Me breast prosthetic. Handler is clearly a complex woman, and this biography deals well with those complexities.

The beginning of the book seemed a bit fluffy, lots of flashbacks to Eleanor’s time with FDR to set her political and emotional background. However, the book quickly gained strength and by the midway point I hardly wanted to put it down. I could hardly believe when I was finished that I had already read over 300 pages!

For the full review:
http://devourerofbooks.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/eleanor-vs-ike-book-review/

Overall, it is a quick and entertaining “what if”.½

Nice, breezy "what-if" novel set around the 1952 presidential race pitting Ike, the "conquering hero general" against international stateswoman Eleanor Roosevelt. Depicts a steel-willed Roosevelt who runs her campaign over against the politically expedient and politically savvy. A gratifiying read for this erstwhile liberal. A bit too predictable -- you knew from the start that there would be little doubt that Eleanor would prevail -- but nevertheless satisfying in its positive tone and extremely hopeful message. Full of fascinating factoids and real, thought-provoking quotes from the real players in that election. Interesting insights into the character and legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt's political and social thought. All in all, a fun read.

Robin Gerber was once asked while giving a talk about in conjunction with her book, Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way, if Eleanor Roosevelt ever did anything wrong. Ms. Gerber’s response was, “Yes, she should have run for president.” From that question and her own response, Eleanor vs. Ike, an interesting, fun, and fast-paced novel, was born. It imagines what might have happened if Eleanor Roosevelt ran for president in 1952 against Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Gerber’s inaugural novel begins with Eleanor in Europe, finishing work on a United Nations meeting. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away, Eleanor continued to work for our country. While preparing to leave the meeting, she received an obituary for Lucy Rutherford, a woman with whom her husband had had an affair. Opening the novel with this story really worked to peak my interest about Eleanor. Other than what I may have learned about her in school and the glimpse of her in Annie, I do not know much about her or the world that she inhabited. I was drawn in to the novel by the story of her marriage and childhood.

There is also a lot to be learned and thought through along the roller coaster ride of the 1952 presidential election. Not only did Eleanor and Ike have voices in this novel, so did their staff and their supporters. Sometimes having too many narrators can weigh a novel down, but seeing the campaign from the inside and the outside made it a richer experience. In a time of election, especially during a time of political crisis, we all work together - or, in the case of fringe groups like the KKK, against each other - to determine the course of our history.

As a country, we’ve never had a female represent either major party as it’s presidential candidate. While that might change by the end of the summer, Eleanor vs. Ike addressed many of the issues such a race would bring up. In Gerber’s election of 1952, Eleanor’s detractors were men. I was anticipating another woman to rise up and wreak havoc on her campaign, but such a woman never materialized. Women do tend to serve as each other’s worst enemies, but having Eleanor’s vocal and vicious opposition made up by men is appropriate for that time period. Both political parties were run and controlled by men. A woman would have to run through that gauntlet first. If Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic candidate for president, it will be interesting to see if that has changed.

If I have no vested interest in the outcome, I tend to root for the underdog. This may be attributed to the fact that I grew up as a Detroit Tiger fan, but it’s a part of me nonetheless. Eleanor’s gender and personal insecurities easily made her seem to be an underdog, but her courage in her convictions and her love for her country made her a strong person and a formidable candidate. Despite the fact that there never really was a runoff between Eleanor and Ike, I got caught up in the campaign. Gerber’s dialog is wonderfully readable and moves the novel forward. I stayed up way past my bed time to find out who won the election of 1952 and it was well worth the loss of sleep. We need more leaders like Eleanor Roosevelt, be they Democrats or Republicans. Although she was never on the ballot, I promise you won’t regret casting your vote for her by reading this book.

http://literatehousewife.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/61-eleanor-vs-ike/