This week's pick is Franklin and Lucy

Our “Pick of the Week” is Franklin and Lucy, by Joseph E. Persico. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century. While FDR’s official circle was predominantly male, it was his relationships with women, especially with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, that show us his human side apart from the towering statesman that he was. Persico explores FDR’s romance with Lucy Rutherfurd, which was far deeper and lasted much longer than was previously acknowledged. The author’s provocative conclusions about their relationship are informed by a revealing range of sources, including never-before-published letters and documents from Lucy Rutherfurd’s estate that confirm the intensity and scope of the affair. FDR’s connection with Lucy also creates an opportunity for Persico to take a more penetrating look at the other women in FDR's life. We come to see more clearly how FDR's infidelity as a husband contributed to Eleanor's eventual transformation from a repressed Victorian to perhaps the greatest American woman of her century. Franklin and Lucy is an extraordinary look at the private life of a leader who continues to fascinate scholars and the general public alike.
In Counselor, by Ted Sorensen, John F. Kennedy’s closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history. Sorensen returns to January 1953, when he and the freshman senator from Massachusetts began their extraordinary professional and personal relationship.

Another book is Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers, by Lt. Lynn “Buck” Compton, with Marcus Brotherton. As part of the elite 101st Airborne paratroopers, Lt. Lynn “Buck” Compton fought in the critical battles of World War II, Normandy and Market Garden, as a member of Easy Company, immortalized as the Band of Brothers. Here, Buck Compton tells his own story for the first time. His remarkable life truly represents the embodiment of the “American Dream.” From his years as a two-sport UCLA star who played baseball with Jackie Robinson and football in the 1943 Rose Bowl, through his legendary post-World War II legal career as a prosecutor, in which he helped convict Sirhan Sirhan for the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, Buck Compton had what it took to achieve the extraordinary as: college sports star, esteemed combat veteran, detective, attorney, and finally, judge. This is the true story of a real-life hero who traveled to a faraway place and put his life on the line for the cause of freedom and an insightful memoir about courage, leadership, camaraderie, compassion, and the opportunities for success that can only happen in America.

Escape from the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and her courageous crew, by Alex Kershaw tells the story of the U.S. Navy submarine “Tang,” which by October 1944 the was legendary. She had sunk more enemy ships, rescued more downed airmen, and pulled off more daring surface attacks than any other Allied submarine in the Pacific. And then, on her fifth patrol, tragedy struck. The “Tang” was hit by one of her own faulty torpedoes. The survivors of the explosion struggled to stay alive in their submerged “iron coffin” 180 feet beneath the surface. While the Japanese dropped deadly depth charges, just nine of the original 80-man crew survived a harrowing ascent through the escape hatch. They were close to death when finally liberated in August 1945, but they had revealed nothing to the Japanese, not even the greatest secret of World War II.

“Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: ‘I want to be you.’ My stock reply is always: ‘Then you have to take the whole package,’” Barbara Walters said in the book Audition: A Memoir, by Barbara Walters. Finally, one of the pioneer women in television journalism gives us that ‘whole package,’ in her inspiring and fascinating memoir. After more than 40 years of interviewing heads of states, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her unusual life.

When We Get to Surf City, by Bob Greene is an entertaining, unforgettable American journey of music, memories, and universal longing. For fifteen years beginning in the 1990s, Greene stepped into the touring world of the great early rock bands who gave America the car-radio and jukebox music it still loves best. Singing backup with the legendary Jan and Dean as they endlessly crisscross the nation, Greene takes us to football stadiums and minor-league ballparks, to no-name ice cream stands and midnight diners, to back roads and carnival midways as he tells a riveting story of great fame and lingering sorrow, of unexpected friendship and lasting dreams, of the things that keep us going in the face of all the things that threaten to stop us.

Marion County Library Director Salley Davidson wrote this column . For information, call the Marion County Library at (843) 423-8300.