Description

A nuanced portrait of the first acting woman president written with fresh and cinematic verve by a leading historian on womens suffrage and power

While this nation has yet to elect its first woman presidentand though history has downplayed her rolejust over a century ago a woman became the nations first acting president In fact she was born in 1872 and her name was Edith Bolling Galt Wilson She climbed her way out of Appalachian poverty and into the highest echelons of American power and in 1919 effectively acted as the first woman president of the US before women could even vote nationwide when her husband Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated Beautiful brilliant charismatic catty and calculating she was a complicated figure whose personal quest for influence reshaped the position of First Lady into one of political prominence forever And still nobody truly understands who she was

For the first time we have a biography that takes an unflinching look at the woman whose ascent mirrors that of many powerful American women before and since one full of the compromises and complicities women have undertaken throughout time in order to find security for themselves and make their mark on history She was a shapeshifter who was obsessed with crafting her own reputation at once deeply invested in exercising her own power while also opposing womens suffrage With narrative verve and fresh eyes Untold Power is a richly overdue examination of one of American historys most influential complicated women as well as the surprising and often absurd realities of American politics