First Ladies

Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

Contributors

By Susan Swain

By C-SPAN

Foreword by Richard Norton Smith

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A look inside the personal life of every first lady in American history, based on original interviews with major historians

C-SPAN’s yearlong history series, First Ladies: Influence and Image, featured interviews with more than fifty preeminent historians and biographers. In this informative book, these experts paint intimate portraits of all forty-five first ladies — their lives, ambitions, and unique partnerships with their presidential spouses. Susan Swain and the C-SPAN team elicit the details that made these women who they were: how Martha Washington intentionally set the standards followed by first ladies for the next century; how Edith Wilson was complicit in the cover-up when President Wilson became incapacitated after a stroke; and how Mamie Eisenhower used the new medium of television to reinforce her, and her husband’s, positive public images.

This book provides an up-close historical look at these fascinating women who survived the scrutiny of the White House, sometimes at great personal cost, while supporting their families and famous husbands — and sometimes changing history. Complete with illustrations and essential biographical details, it is an illuminating, entertaining, and ultimately inspiring read.
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Genre:

On Sale
Oct 4, 2016
Page Count
496 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9781610397179

Susan Swain

About the Author

Susan Swain is C-SPAN’s co-CEO and, in addition to her senior management role at the network, has been an on-camera host for C-SPAN for more than thirty years, interviewing public officials, historians, and journalists for the public affairs network. She lives in the Washington, DC, suburbs.

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C-SPAN

About the Author

Brian Lamb is C-SPAN’s founding CEO and chairman and longtime on-camera interviewer. Lamb lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Susan Swain is President & co-Chief Operating Officer of C-SPAN. For more than twenty-five years, she has been an on-air interviewer for the program. A regular moderator of Washington Journal, she’s interviewed hundreds of members of Congress, policy experts, journalists and several presidents. She lives in Northern Virginia.

Mark Farkas has been involved in C-SPAN feature productions for a quarter-century. In addition to his projects on the U.S. Capitol and the White House, Farkas was executive producer for C-SPAN’s 1999-2000 Peabody Award-winning series “American Presidents: Life Portraits;” the 1998 “Alexis deTocqueville Tour,” and 1994’s “Lincoln-Douglas Debates.”

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