Saturday, March 28, 2009
Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House
Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House
From the author of our popular Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents comes another rambunctious look at White House history—and this time, women are in the spotlight. Secrets Lives of the First Ladies features outrageous and uncensored profiles of all the presidents' wives. You'll discover that Dolley Madison loved to chew tobacco. Mary Todd Lincoln was committed to an asylum, and Mamie Eisenhower never missed an episode of As the World Turns. You'll also learn why Hillary Clinton went to work for Wal-Mart (long before she started campaigning for a higher minimum wage). Complete with biographies of every first lady, Secret Lives of the First Ladies tackles rough questions that other history books are afraid to ask: How many of these women owned slaves? Which ones were cheating on their husbands? And why did Eleanor Roosevelt serve hot dogs to the Kings and Queens of England? American history was never this much fun!Product Details
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Cormac O'Brien is the author of Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents.
Customer Reviews
Cheeky history
I enjoyed the background information about the presidential wives that I had no knowledge of before. It seems that it takes a special lady to be the wife of the president. What I found from most of them was that it seemed like they were an important part of who their husbands had become.
Great information
This book is written humorously while presenting realistic portrayals of the women who serves as "First Ladies". A great companion piece for the "Secret Lives of the Presidents"/o
Pretty Decent Read
I have yet to read "The Secret Lives of the Presidents" but I picked this up because I am really interested in women's history. This book is a decent portrait or how the role of First Lady has evolved and yet stayed the same (I'm not sure if this is possible, but this books makes it appear to be).
What I found really interesting were the differences and similarities of these women: the number of women who never wanted to be first lady and the ones who relished the role; which ones were for and against suffrage and women's rights; the ones who were "just a spouse" vs. the ones who seemed to have a great partnership with their husbands; who loved being a hostess and who relegated the chore to someone else; for some reason I was amazed at the number of philanderers who made it to the White House and yet all of their wives stuck by them (I believe Hilary Clinton was the only one who suffered the negative effects of this) ... I found it noteworthy that out of all of the First Ladies, only Hilary Clinton and Eleanore Roosevelt were credited with a possible extramarital affair.
The beginning of each chapter lists some biographical information on the Ladies (life span, spouses, years in the White House, number of children) and I loved that their religions and astrological signs were included, along with a nifty quote. It was nice of Cormac O'Brien to include the wives who didn't make it to the White House because of divorce or premature death.
All in all this was a nice, fluffy introduction of the first ladies. It wasn't as juicy as I thought it would be, but it's full of fun little facts. I look forward to reading more comprehensive books on the First Ladies in the future.
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