American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden

by Katie Rogers Narrated by Karen Murray, Katie Rogers

Overview

The first definitive exploration of the*changing*role of the twenty-first-century First Lady, painting a comprehensive portrait of Jill Biden-from a White House correspondent for The New York Times

“A fascinating and deeply researched exploration into the most public facing and least understood role in Washington.”-Kate Andersen Brower, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women

Since*the Clinton era, shifts in media, politics, and pop culture have all redefined expectations of First Ladies, even as the boundaries set upon them have often remained anachronistic. With sharp insights and dozens of firsthand interviews with major players in the Biden, Obama, Trump, Bush, and Clinton orbits, including Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers traces the evolution of the role of the twenty-first-century First Lady from a ceremonial figurehead to a powerful political operator, which culminates in the tenure of First Lady Jill Biden.
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Dr. Jill Biden began her journey toward public life in 1975 as a twenty-three-year-old who caught the eye of a widowed Senator Joe Biden. Recovering from the heartbreak of her failed first marriage, she found a man who was still grieving. She knitted his life together after unspeakable tragedy and stood by his side through three presidential campaigns.
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In some ways, her legacy as First Lady was set before she ever entered the White House: She is the first presidential spouse in history to work in a paid role outside the White House, a decision that blazes the path for future first spouses. But as a prime guardian of one of the most insular operations in modern politics, she is also a central part of her husband's presidential legacy.
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Through deep reporting and newly discovered correspondence, American Woman is the first book to paint a*full*picture of Jill Biden while exploring how she helps answer the evolving question of what the role of the modern First Lady should be.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

[A] deeply interesting, and thoroughly researched, look at the role of First Lady.”—Town & Country

“[Katie] Rogers is a gimlet-eyed White House reporter for the New York Times who writes with more verve than many on the beat, and she has studded her book with delicious aperçus and insider tea.”—The Washington Post
 
“The continued existence of [Jill] Biden’s teaching career illustrates how inviolable assumptions about first ladies can seem—until they are smashed by the obstinacy of an individual woman.”—The Atlantic

“Rogers is personable, relatable, and witty about the absurdities that accompany covering the White House.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“From one of our shrewdest students of the Presidency comes this trenchant, fresh and fascinating story of Jill Biden and earlier First Ladies in our time, and how—both in public and private—they have transformed what we should expect of a Presidential spouse.”—Michael Beschloss

“Katie Rogers’s fresh reporting offers striking revelations about the inner lives of the first ladies. Each of these women has faced the society’s fickle expectations and arbitrary limitations on female power.”—Kate Andersen Brower, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women

“American Woman is a triumph. Katie Rogers brings each of her subjects alive on the page with the care, empathy, guts, and first-class reporting chops that have made her one of the most powerful political writers of the century.”—Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine

“Americans expect a lot from their first ladies and throughout our history many of their contributions have been overlooked. Katie Rogers explores the challenges first ladies face in both meeting and defying those expectations.”—Anita McBride, executive-in-residence at American University and author of U.S. First Ladies

“With deep reporting and revealing firsthand anecdotes, American Woman takes readers inside the East Wing and into the bizarrely essential role of an American First Lady.”—Kate Bennett, former CNN White House correspondent, author of Free, Melania

“Katie Rogers illuminates this elite club of American women, including their varied personalities and lasting impact.”—Mary Jordan, national political correspondent for The Washington Post, author of The Art of Her Deal

“Katie Rogers shows us the knowledge, wisdom, tenacity, and world-building powers some of the most famous women were holding right in front of us.”—Sam Sanders, founding co-host of The NPR Politics Podcast

“Katie Rogers rigorously examines the notion of legacy and the first lady in the modern era.”—Booklist, starred review

“A well-written, extensively researched account of a challenging role in the public eye.”—Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal

01/01/2024

New York Times White House correspondent Rogers looks at the role of U.S. First Ladies. She notes that the position is unpaid, and the duties are unspecified; therefore, the incumbent has the opportunity to make the job her own. The book's introduction examines First Ladies before the Clinton administration and shows how the role has evolved since. Rogers applies specific characteristics—ambition, tradition, expectations, and even reluctance—to Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama, and Melania Trump respectively and details how each woman shaped the office during her tenure. The core of the book examines Jill Biden's service in-depth. Rogers says that Biden embodies traditional traits, such as support for her family and her husband's career, but she also continues to teach English, when her predecessors were not allowed to have other jobs. She looks at Biden as an asset to her husband's campaign, as well as her role as the source of familial stability. She gives a brief comparison to men political spouses, namely Doug Emhoff, the current Second Gentleman. VERDICT A thoughtful and recommended exploration of the often-contradictory office of U.S. First Lady. General readers interested in learning more about Jill Biden will especially enjoy this title.—Rebekah Kati

Kirkus Reviews

2023-11-11
A historical study of the soft power of modern First Ladies.

As a White House correspondent for the New York Times who’s covered two presidential administrations, Rogers has reported recently on the Hunter Biden custody case involving his unacknowledged daughter, Navy. The author uses the life and career of Jill Biden as a springboard to discuss the evolving nature of the modern First Lady role, starting with Hillary Clinton. As Rogers writes, the word ambition is not often associated with First Ladies. Even though she was often pilloried for her ambition, Clinton was the first lawyer in the role, and she was also a highly competent policymaker charged with putting together a national health care bill in the first 100 days of her husband’s presidency. “No First Lady had ever tried to push the boundaries of her role so far and so fast,” writes Rogers about the resulting backlash. In contrast, Laura Bush, the soft-spoken librarian and teacher, did not get involved in the administration policies of her husband. “She was not there to push George toward policy or to mediate some of the more conservative voices in his ear,” writes the author. “She was there to remind him where he came from.” Outspoken Michelle Obama left her high-paying job to help her husband’s campaign, while Jill Biden has continued to work at a community college. Melania Trump was the most enigmatic of the modern First Ladies, defined largely by her absence and Sphinx-like demeanor and sometimes odd behavior and comments. All of Rogers’ subjects faced controversies and “struggle[d] with feeling understood.” The author’s detailed coverage of the Bidens, from their earliest days, reveals a symbiotic partnership, and Jill emerges as a fiercely protective mother and wife, not easily forgiving of disloyalty.

A well-written, extensively researched account of a challenging role in the public eye.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178153673
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	762,258

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Mermaids

In June 1990, Barbara Bush visited the campus of Wellesley College to perform the routine duty of delivering a commencement speech to that year’s graduating class. She was roughly eighteen months into her tenure as First Lady and was in the midst of a busy graduation season; she had already delivered remarks to graduates at the University of Pennsylvania and St. Louis University. Her appearance at Wellesley, an elite all-­female school in the woods of eastern Massachusetts, was supposed to be the sort of choreographed assignment that she could carry out in between fundraising trips to Texas and White House events in Washington.

But Barbara had known that her Wellesley visit would be different. The students hadn’t wanted her to come.

The year had marked the dawn of a new decade, and a generation of young American women had been raised on the promise that they would benefit from the landmark political and cultural changes that had occurred during their lifetimes. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 had prohibited workplace and pay discrimination on the basis of sex. In 1973, Roe v. Wade established a constitutional right to abortion. The 1980s saw women enter the workforce at unprecedented levels, prompting new discussions about how to balance having a family and a career—and whether it was at all possible. So the First Lady’s trip to Massachusetts was overshadowed by a roiling debate over whether Barbara—then the sixty-­four-­year-­old wife of a Republican president and a woman whose primary life achievements included supporting her family—deserved to deliver the Wellesley commencement address.

“Wellesley teaches that we will be rewarded on the basis of our own merit, not on that of a spouse,” read a petition that circulated among students protesting the First Lady’s speech. “To honor Barbara Bush as a commencement speaker is to honor a woman who has gained recognition through the achievements of her husband, which contravenes what we have been taught over the last four years at Wellesley.”

Barbara had not been their first choice. That privilege had gone to the Black novelist Alice Walker, who won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple, an exploration of Black womanhood, gender roles, sexual discovery, and resilience. American feminism was slowly beginning to expand its gaze from the white middle class to include women of color, but Walker was vocal in her belief that feminism—at least as it was understood, discussed, and marketed—had not been inclusive enough. She had coined the term “womanist” to make the point that feminism—at least as far as a generation of white women had defined it—largely excluded the experiences of women of color. Walker was a provocative and accomplished author who could challenge a graduating class primarily composed of middle-­class white women, but she declined the invitation.

The invitation was repurposed and sent to the Bush White House, where it promptly sparked a debate about modern feminism that drew national attention. The graduates were trying to understand, really, the limits of what they were allowed to want. Was it a career? Was it a career and a marriage? Was it a career, a marriage, and children? This was the first generation to be introduced to the idea of “having it all,” a phrase that has, for decades, prompted endless searching discussions but no universal answer. (If you ask Jill Biden, a working mother and grandmother with a demanding schedule, what “having it all” means, she will look at you quizzically before answering, “I don’t think you can really have it all. You know, at least not at the same time. And I think I would never say that for myself.”)

The criticism over the invitation to Barbara was so widespread that even the president got involved. President George H. W. Bush could not resist defending his wife: “I think these young women can have a lot to learn from Barbara Bush and from her unselfishness and from her advocacy of literacy and of being a good mother and a lot of other things,” the president said, according to a front-­page story in The New York Times that appeared in May 1990.

On graduation day, the First Lady appeared onstage at Wellesley with Raisa Gorbacheva, the wife of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who at the time was overseeing the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Their appearance was meant to telegraph a new sense of optimism that the Cold War would finally end.

Barbara wore a robe, her trademark string of pearls, and brick-­red lipstick. Her white hair was rolled into a tuft of snowy curls. She understood that she wasn’t exactly the picture of modernity. She had dropped out of school after two years at Smith College to marry George Bush, a handsome navy warplane pilot who had narrowly survived a combat mission in September 1944. (They married in January 1945.) The couple moved to Texas and had six children, with Barbara watching over the brood as her husband built an oil business and, later, a career in politics.

Forty-­five years later, she found herself speaking to a crop of young and idealistic graduates who had been conditioned to question the offerings of domesticity. Instead of trying to assure the young women that she was one of them, and instead of being defensive about her background and her decisions to marry rather than pursue a career, she honestly and elegantly drew contrasts between her generation and theirs.

“Now, I know your first choice for today was Alice Walker—guess how I know—known for The Color Purple,” she told the crowd. “Instead you got me, known for the color of my hair.”

The speech that followed was earthy and full of humor, delivered with the sly smiles and in-­on-the-­joke grimaces of a woman who understood what the crowd expected from her and who was intent on delivering something else.

She recounted a story by the author Robert Fulghum about a young pastor who created a game called Giants, Wizards, and Dwarfs for a group of unruly children. “You have to decide now,” the pastor instructed the children, “which you are . . . a giant, a wizard or a dwarf.”

As the children rushed to sort themselves into categories, the pastor felt a small girl tugging at his pants leg: “But where do the mermaids stand?” she asked. The pastor told her that mermaids didn’t exist, but the little girl protested, insisting that she was, indeed, a mermaid.

“She intended to take her place wherever mermaids fit in the scheme of things,” the First Lady told the graduates in the crowd. “Where do mermaids stand, all of those who are different, those who do not fit the boxes and the pigeonholes?”

There had been so much controversy surrounding the event that three major networks aired it live, an unusual occurrence for a First Lady’s speech. She urged the women in the crowd to embrace their passions, nurture their relationships, and prioritize their time with their families.

“At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, winning one more verdict, or closing one more deal,” she told them. “You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend, or a parent.”

Americans who observed the speech that day saw a First Lady who used grit and grace to nod to a new generation and acknowledge that times were changing: “Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse,” she said. “And I wish him well.”

When she was finished, the graduates got to their feet and cheered. The stakes had been high and the margin for error was slim, but it only took eleven minutes for the First Lady, whose very presence had been the subject of protest and ridicule, to disarm her audience. When Barbara arrived back at the White House, aides had strung up a banner to greet her home: a job wellesley done.

“You can see the winds of change in that crowd of women,” said Anita McBride, who served as chief of staff to Laura Bush and now studies the history of First Ladies. “That, for me, is really a signal for the modern age of the First Lady. Society was changing, the generations were changing, and they had different expectations for women’s roles.”

The role of First Lady is an unpaid position that bestows upon its holder no formal responsibilities, only the pressure of meeting the ever-­shifting expectations of the president, his aides and allies, the American people, and a restive press corps. In biographies and memoirs, the women who have served the American people alongside their husbands have grappled with the responsibility and difficulty of occupying this rare space in government.

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