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First Ladies
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First Ladies
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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.
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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.
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Radical political and social changes, together with the development of radio and television, have dramatically altered the role of the President's wife since the early years of this century. Gutin's book examines the public and private personas of twelve presidential wives in the context of those changes. Focusing on the First Lady's public communications, Gutin looks at the roles that each of these women has filled, from ceremonial figure and White House hostess to presidential surrogate, campaigner, and independent advocate for special causes.
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Presidential Frontiers: Underexplored Issues in White House Politics (Chap. 11 "First Partner: First Ladies and Their Roles")
by Ryan J. Barilleaux. 244 pgs.
By exploring important issues that have received little attention before now, this edited collection breaks new ground in our understanding of America's highest office. The volume brings together established scholars and promising young researchers to open new questions about our most important political institution.
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The Other Elites: Women, Politics, and Power in the Executive Branch (Chap. 10 "The Office of the First Lady and Public Policymaking")
by MaryAnne Borrelli, Janet M. Martin. 284 pgs.
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Women, Media, and Politics (Chap. 9 "The First Lady, Political Power, and the Media: Who Elected Her Anyway?")
by Pippa Norris. 269 pgs.
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.
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Not So!: Popular Myths about America from Columbus to Clinton (Chap. 42 "Presidential Wives")
by Paul F. Boller Jr. 278 pgs.
In sailing westward in 1492, did Columbus defy the prevailing belief that the Earth was flat? Was Thomas Paine an atheist? Was Truman plucked from obscurity to be FDR's running mate in 1944? Are presidential campaigns nowadays far dirtier than they were in the past? Is Hillary Clinton the most active or influential First Lady ever? Not so, says Paul Boller, in this delightfully informative look at some of the most common myths and misconceptions about the American past. As he did in his bestselling They Never Said It, Boller provides us with a cornucopia of historical correction, debunking myths that range from the trivial--for instance, George Washington did not have false teeth made of wood (they were made of ivory)--to the pernicious (FDR did not know in advance that the Japanese planned to bomb Pearl Harbor). We learn that most educated people in Columbus's day knew the world was round (it was Washington Irving who first portrayed Columbus as defying a coterie of flat-earthers); that Washington's famous Farewell Address was mostly written by Alexander Hamilton; that the Pledge of Allegiance was penned by Francis Bellamy, a devout socialist, in 1892 (and it was intended as a paean to big government); that Thomas Paine was not an atheist, but a deist (as were Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin), and his Age of Reason attacked both organized religion and atheism; that Truman was far from an obscure politician in 1944 (he had been on the cover of Time in 1943 for his Senate work uncovering waste and fraud in the war industries, and a Look magazine poll placed Truman among the ten figures who had contributed the most to the war effort); that presidential campaigns in the old days were more vituperative than recent ones; and that several First Ladies were more influential than Hillary Clinton, most notably Eleanor Roosevelt and Edith Wilson (the latter played a crucial role in her husband's administration from 1919 to 1921, after he suffered a massive stroke). Boller doesn't simply debunk each myth, but instead provides us with much fascinating history surrounding each case, so that the reader is treated to intriguing discussions of many singular episodes in American history, including the Kennedy assassination, the McCarthy hearings, the events leading up to Pearl Harbor, and Watergate. And finally, if the book provides many eye-opening surprises and amusing passages, there is also a serious side of Boller's exploration of American myth. As he shows, much misinformation has been cooked up for political or ideological reasons. By debunking these tales, Boller warns us to question what we hear and what we think we know about America and about our leaders, past and present. The chronicles of American history are strewn with legends, fables, folklore, misconceptions, and outright lies. Patriotism has set many a tall tale in motion, but so have political partisanship and ideological zeal. For everyone who loves history--or the truth--Paul Boller has given us a candid and absorbing look at the American past that helps us get a good sense of where we have been and who we are as a people.
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Although Martha Washington has been the subject of several popular biographies, her writings, scattered into private hands, archives, and repositories, have never before been collected and published. This book attempts to publish all the known Martha Washington papers from every possible source. Most of her correspondence relates to key periods in her life - her first widowhood, the Revolutionary War, Washington's presidency, and the period after his death. Widowed at the age of twenty-six, her early correspondence was to settle and manage the affairs of her husband's estate, well documenting both legal and commercial affairs. During the revolutionary era, her letters, to friends, family, and acquaintances, are especially revealing for references to military affairs. The largest portion of the letters, written to friends and relatives during the presidential years, shed light on the Washingtons' life at Mount Vernon, New York, and Philadelphia. This book will be valuable to scholars of the Washington era and will interest all who are curious about Martha Washington.
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'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
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A woman of intelligence and energy, Lou Henry Hoover's talents benefited a large number of cultural and philanthropic organizations, but her distaste for publicity obscured her many achievements until now. By the time her husband reached the White House in 1929, she had already established herself as a woman with high goals. The first woman to earn a university degree in geology, she collaborated with her husband in the translation of a classic book on mining methods. During World War I, she organized assistance for American travelers stranded in Europe, campaigned on behalf of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, and set up a boarding house in Washington D.C. for young women working in war-related agencies.
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The Makers of America series provides introductory biographies of major figures in modern American history. Each volume uses documentary evidence and archive photographs.
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The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter (Chap. 22 "Rosalynn Carter in the White House")
by Herbert D. Rosenbaum, Alexej Ugrinsky. 876 pgs.
Jimmy Carter was an unexpected president. The first Southerner since the Civil War to gain the office, he had pursued the presidency at the grass roots as an outsider. A president who sought to run "a government as good as the American people," Carter soon found himself embroiled in system overload as he worked on a domestic agenda to increase park lands; to make the federal judiciary accessible to more women and minorities; to better manage the civil service; to devise a rational, long-range policy of energy consumption and conservation; and to keep the deficit under control. Deadlocked with Congress, special interests, and, ultimately, caught up in the Iran hostage crisis, the outsider president saw many of his programs defeated and himself voted out of office.
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