LORENA HICKOK is in a unique position to write the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's transition from a private individual to First Lady of the land. As a newspaper reporter, she had known Mrs. Roosevelt since Al Smith's campaign for President, and she was assigned by the Associated Press to cover her during her husband's presidential campaign in 1932. With this new assignment, the two shortly became, as they have remained, very good friends. The author...

"Between 1933 and 1935, Lorena Hickok traveled across thirty-two states as a "confidential investigator" for Harry Hopkins, head of FDR's Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Her assignment was to gather information about the day-to-day toll the Depression was exacting on individual citizens. "One Third of a Nation" is her record, underscored by the eloquent photographs of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and others, of the shocking plight of millions...

The relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok has sparked vociferous debate ever since 1978, when archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library discovered eighteen boxes filled with letters the two women exchanged during their thirty-year friendship. But until now we have been offered only the odd quotation or excerpt from their voluminous correspondence. In Empty Without You, journalist and historian Rodger...