A Companion to First Ladies

With contributions from nearly 40 scholars, A Companion to the First Ladies presents the first comprehensive historiographical overview of the First Ladies, the wives – or sometimes other female relatives – who have stood by U.S. presidents, often as powerful political figures in their own right. The original essays that make up this collection address the impact of these women not only on White House responsibilities, but on elections, presidential policies, social causes, and in shaping their husbands legacies. This volume brings the First Ladies into crisp historiographical focus, assessing how these women and their contributions have been perceived in both popular literature and scholarly debate. Covering all of the First Ladies through to the present, from Martha Washington through Michelle Obama, it underlines the growing scholarly appreciation for a position that has itself gone through a great deal of evolution since the early American Republic.

Katherine A.S. Sibley is Professor of History at Saint Joseph s University, USA. She is the author of four books, most recently  First Lady Florence Harding: Behind the Tragedy and Controversy (2009) and  Red Spies in America: Stolen Secrets and the Dawn of the Cold War (2004). She was the editor of A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover (Wiley Blackwell, 2014), and serves on the editorial board of  American Communist History as well as on the Historical Advisory Committee for the US State Department.