Confidante

Confidante is the first biography of Anna Marie Rosenberg, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who became Franklin D. Roosevelt's closest adviser during World War II. Her life ran alongside the front lines of history, and her influence on twentieth-century America, from the New Deal to the Cold War and beyond, has never been fully told.

Rosenberg came from modest immigrant beginnings and had only a high school education. She started out in public relations in 1920s Manhattan, combining charm with a toughness shaped by Tammany politics. She befriended Eleanor Roosevelt, who recommended her to her husband while he was running for Governor of New York. As FDR's unofficial adviser she wielded great influence, subtle but potent, and Roosevelt nicknamed her 'my Mrs. Fix-It.' During the war she served as his special envoy to Europe, going where the president could not. She was among the first Allied women to enter a liberated concentration camp and stood in the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's mountain retreat, days after its capture. She also helped guide the G.I. Bill of Rights and the Manhattan Project.

Her career continued after Roosevelt's death. In 1950 she was named assistant secretary of defense, the highest post a woman had held in the US military, which led Senator Joe McCarthy to mount an unsuccessful smear campaign against her. In 1962 she organized John F. Kennedy's birthday gala, sitting beside him as Marilyn Monroe sang. To the end of her life she worked for causes including racial integration, women's equality and national health care.

Christopher C. Gorham also uses her story to ask who gets to stand at the forefront of history, and why. Rosenberg was not quite a hidden figure, but her role as the power behind others, together with her status as an immigrant and a Jewish woman, led to her importance being downplayed. The book is suggested for readers of A Woman of No Importance, Three Ordinary Girls and Eleanor: A Life.