No Ordinary Time
Popular History Intermediate Mixed
🇺🇸 American
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the American home front, from the fall of France to victory.
The Verdict
The American home front and the marriage at its centre, told by one of the country's finest narrative historians. Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer winner follows Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt through the war years — the transformation of a depression-bound, isolationist nation into the arsenal of democracy, run from a White House crowded with advisers, houseguests, and secrets. It is political history written with a novelist's eye for character, as attentive to a difficult marriage as to mobilisation. Intimate and panoramic at once.
Who Should Read It
Read it if you want
- The US home front and wartime leadership
- Readers who want the Roosevelts as people
- Pulitzer-winning narrative history
- How America mobilised for total war
Look elsewhere if you want
- Battlefield or military narrative
- Readers wanting the war overseas
- A short overview
Why We Rated It 4.6
Historical Context
No Ordinary Time covers the United States from 1940 to 1945 through the partnership of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt — the end of isolationism, industrial mobilisation, civil-rights pressures, and the conduct of the war from Washington. Published in 1994, it won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Events Covered
Editions & Reading Notes
Simon & Schuster (1994)First edition.
PaperbackThe standard reading edition.
Read It Alongside
Citizens of London Lynne Olson · 2010 · ★ 4.4
Popular History 
The Second World War Winston S. Churchill · 1948 · ★ 4.5
Memoir 
Flags of Our Fathers James Bradley · 2000 · ★ 4.4
Popular History Collector's Corner
Common and inexpensive. Check current listings. → Check listings on AbeBooks.
Where to Buy
ISBN: 978-0684804484
Read This Against
The same events seen from a different vantage point. The fullest understanding often lives in the space between accounts that don't agree.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What is No Ordinary Time about?
- The American home front in the war years, seen through Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the mobilisation of the country.
- Did it win the Pulitzer?
- Yes — the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History.