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Betty Boyd Caroli's engrossing and informative First Ladies is both
a captivating read and an essential resource for anyone interested
in the role of America's First Ladies. Caroli observes the role as
it has shifted and evolved from ceremonial backdrop to substantive
world figure. This expanded and updated fifth edition presents
Caroli's keen political analysis and astute observations of recent
developments in First Lady history, including Melania Trump's
reluctance to take on the mantle and former First Lady Hilary
Clinton's recent run for president. Caroli here contributes a new
preface and updated chapters. Covering all forty-five women from
Martha Washington to Melania and Ivanka Trump and including the
daughters, daughters-in-law, and sisters of presidents who served
as First Ladies, Caroli explores each woman's background, marriage,
and accomplishments and failures in office. This remarkable lot
included Abigail Adams, whose "remember the ladies" became a
twentieth-century feminist refrain; 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; Eleanor Roosevelt, who epitomized the politically
involved First Lady; and Pat Nixon, who perfected what some have
called "the robot image." They ranged in age from early 20s to late
60s; some received superb educations for their time, while others
had little or no schooling. Including the courageous and
adventurous, the ambitious, and the reserved, these women often did
not fit the traditional expectations of a presidential helpmate.
First Ladies is an engaging portrait of how each First Lady changed
the role and how the role changed in response to American culture.
These women left remarkably complete records, and their stories
offer us a window through which to view not only this particular
sorority of women, but also the role of American woman in general.
When Betty Boyd Caroli traveled to Italy on a Fulbright in 1970,
she had a purpose: to find Italians who had journeyed to America to
work between 1900 and 1914 and then returned to live in Italy.
Sometimes she found clubs of "repatriates," sitting under American
flags and pictures of JFK. Individuals told her their stories-why
they left for "bread" but returned for "family." Caroli puts these
workers in context, giving statistics from both countries and
citing accounts written by their contemporaries, to help us
understand the price paid by these "birds of passage."
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