Abigail Adams

'Portia....is a refreshing change of pace....(Edith Gelles) is affectionate yet scholarly, determined to present Adams as a strong character who was very much a woman of her time, not merely a liberated precursor to feminism or the little wife behind the great man.' - Melanie Lawrence, San Francisco Chronicle

As his previous books Presidential Anecdotes and Presidential Campaigns clearly proved, Paul F. Boller, Jr. has a remarkable eye for the telling detail that humanizes history and gives it life. In this new book, he brings that gift to bear on the women our Presidents married, and the result is a biographical feast--at once funny and poignant, dramatic and illuminating, covering every First Lady from Martha Washington to Nancy Reagan. In these vivid and entertaining pages, we encounter the trend-setter Dolley Madison's "unfortunate propensity to snuff-taking"--a propensity that soon had Washington's other women doing the same. We learn that Mary Todd Lincoln held such harsh opinions of some of her husband's appointments that he felt compelled to tell her, "If I listened to you, I should soon be without a cabinet." We meet Edith Wilson in a Red Cross canteen after America's entry into World War I, dispensing candy and cigarettes to the doughboys departing for France. We find Eleanor Roosevelt on the night of FDR's election to his first term, lamenting, "Now I'll have no identity," and then going on to become the greatest of all the "Woman Doers" to occupy the White House. And we hear Lady Bird Johnson's advice to her two young daughters prior to a State Dinner in honor of the President of Sudan: "Read all you can in the encyclopedia about the Sudan. And don't drink any of the wine at dinner." In the manner of his earlier books, Boller devotes a chapter to each of his subjects, featuring an incisive biographical essay followed by a selection of revealing anecdotes. The book portrays a diverse group of women--shrinking violets, passionate partisans, spotlight-loving hostesses, and devoted helpmeets who remained silent in public but actively advised their husbands in private. Once again, Boller delightfully demonstrates how much the institution of the presidency and all that surrounds it tells us about ourselves as a people and our life as a nation.

Beginning with colonial times and moving to the present, Otten examines women's struggle for social, economic, political, and civic equality, using key Supreme Court decisions as the basis for chronicling the changing position of women in American society.

This study of the relationship between women, media and politics looks at a variety of topics including women as journalists, media framing of the generation gap, and talk radio and gender politics.

This unique guide will enable students, librarians, teachers, and general readers to easily identify the best biographies and autobiographies of 500 of the most notable women in American history. Spanning from colonial America through 1998, the guide features entries on historical and contemporary women who have achieved recognition in more than 100 fields of endeavor. It annotates approximately 1350 recommended books published since 1970 about these women. The compilation of works selected here is unavailable in any other reference.

Placing herself in the avid reader's chair, Linda Wagner-Martin writes about women's biography from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Mead, and even to Cher and Elizabeth Taylor. Along the way, she looks at dozens of other life stories, probing at the differences between biographies of men and women, prevailing stereotypes about women's lives and roles, questions about what is public and private, and the hazy margins between autobiography, biography, and other genres. In quick-paced and wide-ranging discussions, she looks at issues of authorial stance (who controls the narrative? who chooses which story to tell?), voice (is this story told in the traditional objective tone? and if it is, what effect does that telling have on our reading?), and the politics of publishing (why aren't more books about women's lives published? and when they are, what happens to their advertising budgets?). She discusses the problems of writing biography of achieving women who were alsowives (how,does the biographer balance the two?), of daughters who attempt to write about their mothers, and of husbands trying to portray their wives. Amid the current controversy over biography as partial invention, she weighs the possibilities of ever achieving a true depiction of a life and outlines the responsibility of the biographer and the art of biographical writing. As an accomplished biographer herself, Wagner-Martin weaves comments about her experiences writing about Sylvia Plath, Ellen Glasgow, John Dos Passos, and, most recently, Gertrude Stein throughout her discussion. Her point of view is always illuminating, lively, and readable. Telling Women's Lives is the first overview ofthe writing and the history of biographies about women. It is a significant contribution to the reassessment of the work of the hundreds of women writers who have made a difference in our conception of what women's stories -

As we move toward the year 2000, Americans continue to debate the job of First Lady. How much power does the position actually hold? How publicly should that power be wielded? First Ladies tells the story of this curious institution and the evolution of these women's role from ceremonial backdrop to substantive world figure. This expanded edition brings us up to the present, examining the legacies of our three most recent First Ladies: Nancy Reagan, credited with raising the job to that of "Associate President"; Barbara Bush, who took a more traditional approach); and Hillary Rodham Clinton, widely billed as the person responsible for changing the job completely. Covering all thirty-nine women from Martha Washington to our current First Lady and including the daughters, daughters-in-law, and sisters of presidents who sometimes served as First Ladies, Betty Boyd Caroli explores the background, marriage, and accomplishments and failures in office of each woman. This remarkably diverse lot included Abigail Adams, whose "remember the ladies" became a twentieth-century feminist refrain; Edith Wilson, who alone controlled access to the President when he suffered a stroke; Jane Pierce, who prayed her husband would lose the election; Helen Taft, who insisted on living in the White House, although her husband would have preferred a judgeship; and Pat Nixon, who perfected what some have called "the robot image." They ranged in age from early 20's to late 60's; some received superb educations for their time, while others had little or no schooling. Including the courageous and adventurous, the emotionally unstable, the ambitious, and the reserved, these women often did not fit the traditional expectations of a presidential helpmate. Depicting how these women used the "magic wand" given to them, Caroli reveals not only how each First Lady changed the role, but also how the role changed in response to American culture. Because of their position, these women left remarkably complete records, and their stories offer us an insider's view not only of their lives but also of the history of American women in general.