It is entirely the fault of the reader who neglects to look for caveats in sub-titles if too much is expected from a book. This one simply says, "A friend remembers Eleanor Roosevelt". The approach is latter-day Jane Austen, but prissy and without the style. An awesome respectfulness towards the subject tinctures every chapter, lightened by arcane description of less than monumental events. The saintly Eleanor, it seems, was big-time into tea: "My invitation to tea was occasioned by my recent purchase of a number of objects and books from the collection of the late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mrs Roosevelt . . . I had written to Mrs Roosevelt to say that I was enjoying the Rooseveltiana I had acquired, but that I would very much like to learn more about the history of some of the pieces, descriptions of which I enclosed. So it was that on that early April afternoon in 1953 I found myself having tea with Eleanor Roosevelt." Curious.