688 pages,  Grove Press; Feb.9, 2002,  $14 (Amazon)
By David Cohen
     Much has been written over the years about  Franklin Delano, Theodore and Eleanor Roosevelt. Still, it is useful to have a  new book - a big, bulky new book - that looks at the three of them together, linking and locking them as essential figures in U.S. history. "The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who  Transformed America"  by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn starts at the end of the Civil War (with Teddy, a young boy, watching the nation mourn for Lincoln) and takes us to the end of Eleanor's life almost a century later. The book delves into their personal lives but focuses more on the roles they  played in American society.

It is a portrait not just of three individuals but also of a changing concept of the value and uses of power. The authors write from a liberal perspective - they clearly support the idea of an
activist federal government - but are certainly not uncritical of their protagonists. Burns &Dunn like to weigh major actions/inactions carefully, which is one reason the book clocks in at almost 700 pages.

   The book doesn't break new ground, but it does demonstrate how all three evolved in the context of their family, their political parties/alliances, and their times, becoming, over the years, much different people than they originally presented to the public. In that sense, this is a book not only about what these three did to the U.S. power  structure but what the U.S. power structure did to them. All in all, it is a  valuable and interesting work.

       David Cohen of the Philadelphia Inquirer is the author of "Rugged and Enduring: The Eagles, The Browns and 5 Years of Football."