by Former Times columnist Russell Baker, writing in The New York Review of Books, wrote: “Among the Lelyvelds, confusion, misunderstanding, and excess of silence at all levels were the ingredients of an obviously unhappy family, whose members, if They are asked, Lelyveld says, they would have called themselves a happy family. “His book is more like a life than a memoir.”
Lelyveld wrote “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India” (2011), a book that critics said stood out among some 30 biographies of Mohandas K. Gandhi for its extensive analysis of Gandhi’s civil disobedience campaign. to achieve India’s independence from Britain in 1947 and the life of Hindu asceticism and celibacy that was the basis of his moral authority.
Also exploring Gandhi’s erotically charged friendship with German Jewish architect and bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach, the book sparked protests and was banned in Gandhi’s home state of Gujarat. Lelyveld rejected claims that his book had implied that Gandhi was bisexual.
Lelyveld’s final book, “His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt” (2016), resurrected the dramas of FDR’s final 16 months when, with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure, the president won an unprecedented fourth term. , oversaw the development of the atomic bomb, met with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, and led American forces in the penultimate stages of World War II.
Times colleagues often wondered about Lelyveld’s long pauses and blank stares in conversations. They looked intimidating, but perhaps they meant something more benign. In “Omaha Blues,” he recalled that to celebrate his fifth wedding anniversary with Carolyn, his parents invited them to dinner and used the occasion to announce their own plans to divorce after 30 years of marriage.
“It was hard to know what to say,” he wrote. “’Sorry’ would not have been welcome. “I’m not surprised” would have seemed insensitive. ‘Mazel tov’ would have sounded sarcastic. I guess I muttered another form of ‘Good luck,’ maybe ‘Good chance,’ or just gave my parents one of those blank stares that my father, in particular, had always found disconcerting.”
