As a writer of ten mostly historical nonfiction books, I tried to rely on the original writings of the people that I wrote about rather than third-hand accounts. What I love about reading people's own words is that letters allow you to see a person's humanity and their emotional reactions to their circumstances. I also love the cinematic qualities of the story of the burning of the White House. Both Dolley and James Madison went through an authentic, organic character change in the aftermath, much like characters in a movie. I also loved the revival of patriotism that took place in the aftermath, which is similar to the aftermath of 9/11.
Because Dolley Madison didn't keep a diary, her letters are the best examples that we have of her personality. This social butterfly shows us how she slyly tried to set up a young woman to be romantically involved with her son.
Yet for all of her Southern charm and pretension, Dolley had a steely side. After her first husband died, she wrote to her brother-in-law demanding the inheritance owed to her. After all, women couldn't easily get a job to support themselves. Her letters also show her pride in her parents for emancipating their slaves. Her most famous letter about saving George Washington's painting before the British military burned the White House reveals the chaos of this historic moment and the character of this woman who became known as the first, first lady.
From modest Quaker beginnings as the child of financially insecure parents and the wife of a stolid young lawyer to the excitement and challenges of life as the nation's first First Lady - arguably the most influential role in the American government's formative years - Dolley Payne Todd Madison (1768-1849) led an extraordinary life. David B. Mattern and Holly C. Shulman have culled a particularly rich selection of her letters to illuminate the story of the woman widely credited with setting the standard for successive generations of Washington's political women. This collection will prove an invaluable resource in current political…
I have been intrigued by Eleanor Roosevelt since I was a little girl in Sedalia, Missouri, and my mother read me Eleanor's "My Day" columns in the Kansas City Star. Mother would look up and say, "I'm sure she is better than he is," referring, of course, to Eleanor being better than Franklin. My family was rock-ribbed Republican and disapproved of Franklin's policies. I wondered then—and still do—why my mother and other women of her era had so much reverence for Eleanor. I have been looking for the answer ever since.
Endeavors to tell in one volume the story of an American icon, integrating her personal and public lives. This work offers an introduction to her many public roles—as a journalist, First Lady from 1933-1945, delegate to the United Nations (1945-1952), political leader, media personality—as well as her multifaceted personal life.
The New York Times bestseller from prizewinning author David Michaelis presents a “stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) breakthrough portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt, America’s longest-serving First Lady, an avatar of democracy whose ever-expanding agency as diplomat, activist, and humanitarian made her one of the world’s most widely admired and influential women.
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin…
As a child, I loved reading books about time travel, and now as a historian, I do a sort of time travel for my job. I have always been especially drawn to reading women’s correspondence, particularly when the women involved were pushing against gender roles and finding ways to access political power. I approach doing history as if it’s an ethnography of a group of people with entirely different beliefs, norms, and even emotions from us today; after all, the past is a foreign country. I’m especially intrigued by uncovering how personal relationships worked in the past and how relationships with political figures allowed family and friends to access power.
The story of Martha and George Washington’s marriage is a hard one to tell because almost none of their correspondence survives, but Fraser pieces together a rich story that shows the evolving love story of this famous couple. She makes clear that Martha—both her wealth and her character—was fundamental to making George Washington into the famous general and president he became.
In these pages, acclaimed historian Flora Fraser unfurls the story of George and Martha, brilliantly narrating the lives of an extraordinarily dedicated, accomplished, and historic couple. When they married in colonial Virginia in 1759, he was an awkward but ambitious young officer, she, a graceful, wealthy young widow. They were devoted to one another, and George was as a father to Martha’s children by her first husband. She endowed Washington with the confidence—and resources—that would aid him when elected commander-in-chief of the Continental army. During the war, Martha resolutely supported her husband, ‘the General,’ joining him every winter in headquarters;…
Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls Of Atomic City, The Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods.
The First Lady of the United States is a challenging role that has been navigated by an incredibly wide array of women over the years. Brower has interviewed many of them, and the insights she gives readers into their day-to-day lives—at turns uplifting and heartbreaking—make for an incredibly relatable and inspiring book. This is as behind-the-White House-scenes as you can get. From Jaqueline Kennedy to Michelle Obama, Brower offers an incredibly intimate look at this often misunderstood role in American politics.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the groundbreaking backstairs look at the White House, The Residence, comes an intimate, news-making look at the true modern power brokers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the First Ladies, from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama and Melania Trump. One of the most underestimated-and challenging-positions in the world, the First Lady of the United States must be many things: an inspiring leader with a forward-thinking agenda of her own; a savvy politician, skilled at navigating the treacherous rapids of Washington; a wife and mother operating under constant scrutiny; and an able CEO responsible…
I’ve been interested in exploring the characteristics and meaning of heroines in history since I met two fellow travelers in Nova Scotia in 1990 who introduced me to the work of Joseph Campbell and his The Hero with a Thousand Faces. As a history professor I am interested in women’s changing place in society and the history of heroines is an excellent way to explore this. I am passionate about moving beyond individual, celebratory stories to instead explore themes for a dynamic modern archetype of a heroine across time and cultures. I like to imagine a time when all humans can be heroes without the feminine suffix.
J M Taylor captures the successes and tragedies of Argentina’s ‘Santa Evita’. She unravels the myth-making that surrounded her eventful life.
Eva Peron’s public image and iconography are contrasted with complex class politics, religious observation, political coups, and sexism. Peron’s untimely death from cancer and the story of her corpse not being left to rest in peace is particularly jarring. I like how the book reveals that the history of heroines is complicated and that myth-making can hide important nuances.
Eva Peron , one of the most powerful women in the world at the time of her death in 1952, rose from humble origins to international renown as First Lady of Argentina and the force behind her husband, Juan Peron. Despite her popularity she was inaccessible to the people of Argentina, and so images were constructed around her to fill that void. According to J.M. Taylor, these "myths" around Eva Peron reflect Argentine culture and political history at the time of her seven-year reign. With a brief biography of Eva Peron serving as a backdrop, this study offers an analysis…
My interest in the topic is both professional and personal. I spent four decades teaching about modern American history and the Kennedy presidency at Yale, Oxford, and the University of Oklahoma. A chance encounter with John F. Kennedy, Jr., at Brown University in the spring of 1981 led to a friendship that lasted until his tragic death in 1999.
A few months after President Kennedy’s assassination, Mrs. Kennedy sat down for a series of interviews with the historian and family friend Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Her eight hours of tapes, which remained sealed until a few years ago, are riveting and full of intimate, powerful details.
It is most rewarding to hear her whispery voice as she offers often pointed observations about the people and events that shaped her husband’s presidency.
To mark John F. Kennedy's centennial, celebrate the life and legacy of the 35th President of the United States.
In 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy recorded seven historic interviews about her life with John F. Kennedy. Now, for the first time, they can be read in this deluxe, illustrated eBook.
Shortly after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, with a nation deep in mourning and the world looking on in stunned disbelief, Jacqueline Kennedy found the strength to set aside her own personal grief for the sake of posterity and begin the task of documenting and preserving her husband's legacy. In January of…
I'm a cultural historian (degrees in English and American Studies). I taught at the university level for 25 years (Emerson College, principally) and worked 20+ years as an acquisitions editor, in book publishing, at Harvard, at Cambridge University Press, and for a small company I founded, Berkshire House. I was politically sympathetic to Mrs. Roosevelt’s POV before the “My Day” book project came to me, but, coincidentally, her long run as a syndicated columnist interested me also because my first job, fresh out of college, was as a cub reporter for Associated Press. I learned, in a hurry, how to deliver a story on deadline, with all the facts double checked.
There are several biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, but few match this 3-vol. effort for its comprehensiveness and its sensitivity to the inner life of Eleanor (who led an exceedingly public life). All of Mrs. Roosevelt’s accomplishments are covered—with excellent context—and the bonus here is coverage of her private struggles as a shy, “orphaned” child, then as a beloved wife (to a disloyal husband), her failures as a mother, and her apparently quasi-lesbian attraction to another woman, as well as an unusual attachment to her doctor. Not a simple story!
One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2016 One of NPR's 10 Best Books of 2016
"Heartachingly relevant...the Eleanor Roosevelt who inhabits these meticulously crafted pages transcends both first-lady history and the marriage around which Roosevelt scholarship has traditionally pivoted." -- The Wall Street Journal
The final volume in the definitive biography of America's greatest first lady.
"Monumental and inspirational...Cook skillfully narrates the epic history of the war years... [a] grand biography." -- The New York Times Book Review
Historians, politicians, critics, and readers everywhere have praised Blanche Wiesen Cook's biography of Eleanor Roosevelt as the essential…
Growing up, I often told neighborhood kids about my father’s internment, what he remembered of Camp Crystal City, Texas, where he spent three years, age seven to ten, going to school, swimming, playing in nearby orchards, and other normal experiences—except for the barbed wire, guard towers, and lack of freedom. Later, I wanted to know more and learned that what happened to my family can happen to anybody else if they are feared. More recently, families have been ripped apart, children put in cages, and countless people treated as less than human. My book reminds us of what can happen when fear leads to calling those among us enemies or worse.
Among historians, we know there are few better as academics and storytellers than Goodwin. I love her writing style, and the coverage of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt is unmatched. Small wonder that it was a NYT bestseller! I think any reader would enjoy this magisterial work.
A chronicle of the US and its leaders during the period when modern America was created. It narrates the interrelationships between the inner workings of the Roosevelt White House and the destiny of the US, painting a portrait that fills in a historical gap in the story of America under Roosevelt.
I have been intrigued by Eleanor Roosevelt since I was a little girl in Sedalia, Missouri, and my mother read me Eleanor's "My Day" columns in the Kansas City Star. Mother would look up and say, "I'm sure she is better than he is," referring, of course, to Eleanor being better than Franklin. My family was rock-ribbed Republican and disapproved of Franklin's policies. I wondered then—and still do—why my mother and other women of her era had so much reverence for Eleanor. I have been looking for the answer ever since.
It presents Eleanor as a passionate woman who drew initial strength from feminist networks as she emerged from a bigoted aristocratic background marked by her unhappy orphaned upbringing and her subordinate role as a wife and mother. First (and the best) of Cook's three volumes of biography on Eleanor, it paints an absorbing picture of the way Eleanor shed Victorian prejudice to become an advocate for social justice.
The first volume in the life of America's greatest First Lady, "a woman who changed the lives of millions" (Washington Post).
Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. Three: 1938-1962, will be published in November 2016.
Eleanor Roosevelt was born into the privileges and prejudices of American aristocracy and into a family ravaged by alcoholism. She overcame debilitating roots: in her public life, fighting against racism and injustice and advancing the rights of women; and in her private life, forming lasting intimate friendships with some of the great men and women of her times. This volume covers ER's family and birth, her childhood, education,…
I’ve been in the DEI trenches for over 20 years, and let me tell you, it's been one hell of a ride. As a Black woman navigating this shit show, I've seen it all—from clueless executives to well-meaning “allies” who can't get out of their own way. My passion? Calling out the bullshit and actually making DEI work. I've gone toe-to-toe with tech giants, founded Inclusology, and now I'm tackling a second PhD because I believe in the work, even at is most discouraging. DEI-ing is my no-holds-barred guide to creating real change. I’m all about busting AI bias and building DEI that sticks, not just some feel-good fluff.
I absolutely love this book. Michelle Obama’s story is all about how we are constantly evolving, always “becoming” someone new. She dives deep into lessons about where you come from and how that shapes who you become, especially in how we educate our kids.
It’s powerful to see her journey through different phases of life and how she keeps growing. This book isn’t just a memoir; it’s a powerful reminder that we are always in the process of becoming our true selves.
An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir; 17 million copies sold worldwide
THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER
BRITISH BOOK AWARDS, NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
THE SUNDAY TIMES, MEMOIR OF THE YEAR
BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE TIMES, OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, EVENING STANDARD
Now in paperback featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A, the intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama…
