For the last 20 years of her life, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote an advice column for Ladies Home Journal. Titled “If You Ask Me,” the column entertained a wide range of questions, from the personal to the political, the trivial to the profound. Roosevelt answered each with engaging candor — to the point that the editors issued a disclaimer that the erstwhile First Lady’s statements represented her own beliefs, not those of the magazine. Collecting and annotating a generous sampling of these pieces, Binker, consulting editor for the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project at George Washington University, gives us both a vivid sense of the concerns of the period and illuminates the real Eleanor Roosevelt behind the historical icon.