"It's a wise child, etc.,” and one wonders with what wisdom James Roosevelt undertook to produce (I use the word “produce” advisedly) yet another volume in the already voluminous series of books about his celebrated parents whom, by his own admission, he scarcely knew. With what wisdom, and with what taste—in view of the fact that the parents are no longer around to defend themselves—did he convince himself that this was really a good idea? Items: the author goes to great, and to me painful and unnecessary detail describing his father's physical suffering as a result of his bout with polio—struggling, perspiring, in the agony of leg braces, nearly falling, making his way up the aisle to the speaker's platform to nominate Al Smith for President. F.D.R. handled his pain manfully and gracefully, realizing that pain is a private affair. Now the pain is spread... ames Roosevelt tells us, all over again, of his father's long affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, adding not much that ‐strikes me as new. As result of this relationship, a chill developed between his mother and father, which seems understandable. If the book contains a shocker, it is the revelation that Eleanor Roosevelt “may” have had an affair with Earl Miller, a handsome younger man who was her bodyguard. But in view of Mrs. Roosevelt's prudish, Victorian nature—she once advised her daughter that sex was a cross a woman had to bear—this seems rather unlikely, and her son admits that he is merely guessing. As for other matters of the flesh, Dorothy Schiff, whose relationship with F.D.R. was suggested in recent biography, is mentioned only once in this book when she is identified as a cousin of Felicia Schiff Warburg Sarnoff who, for a brief period, was married to F.D.R. Jr. "--New York times