While this nation has yet to elect its first woman president—and though history has downplayed her role—just over a century ago a woman became the nation’s 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 U.S. (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. UNTOLD POWER: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson is a new biography from Rebecca Boggs Roberts.
Rebecca Boggs Roberts is an award-winning educator, author, and speaker, and is a leading historian of American women’s suffrage and civic participation. Her books include the award-winning The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World; and Suffragists in Washington, D.C.: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote. She is currently deputy director of events at the Library of Congress, and has previously worked as a journalist, producer, tour guide, forensic anthropologist, event planner, political consultant, jazz singer, and radio talk show host. Roberts serves on the board of the National Archives Foundation, on the Council of Advisors of the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation, and on the Editorial Advisory Committee of the White House Historical Association. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, their three sons, and a long-eared hound dog.
