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Jan Jarboe Russell

Biography

Jan Jarboe Russell

Jan Jarboe Russell is the author of the New York Times bestseller THE TRAIN TO CRYSTAL CITY: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II, winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Prize for Best Book of Nonfiction. She is a Neiman Fellow, a contributing editor for Texas Monthly, and has written for the San Antonio Express-News, The New York Times, Slate and other magazines. She also compiled and edited THEY LIVED TO TELL THE TALE. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Dr. Lewis F. Russell, Jr.

Jan Jarboe Russell

Books by Jan Jarboe Russell

Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village
by Jan Jarboe Russell - Memoir, Nonfiction

Hundreds of books have been written about FDR and Eleanor, both together and separately, yet she remains a compelling and elusive figure. And not much is known about why in 1920, Eleanor suddenly abandoned her duties as a mother of five and moved to Greenwich Village, then the symbol of all forms of transgressive freedom --- communism, homosexuality, interracial relationships and subversive political activity. Now, in ELEANOR IN THE VILLAGE, Jan Jarboe Russell pulls back the curtain on Eleanor’s life to reveal the motivations and desires that drew her to the Village and how her time there changed her political outlook.

The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
by Jan Jarboe Russell - History, Nonfiction

Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in American history that has long been kept quiet, THE TRAIN TO CRYSTAL CITY reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, the secrets of FDR’s tactics to rescue high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan, and how the definition of American citizenship changed under the pressure of war.