This portrait of the first acting woman president tracks the ascent of Edith Boling Galt Wilson, one of American history's most influential and complicated women.
Fast-moving, sure-footed ... Untold Power is a delightful read. Ms. Roberts, a historian of American women’s suffrage, has clearly enjoyed getting to know her subject, in part through unpublished chapters of Edith’s memoirs. Yet she doesn’t valorize Edith unduly. She treats with tactful historical perspective certain retrograde attitudes of both the president and Mrs. Wilson, but she doesn’t skip over them, either.
Rebecca [has a] flair for writing crisp and engaging narratives. Her book Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson is quite simply a compelling yarn ... Roberts’s description of Wilson’s wooing springs to life through her careful research of the love notes the couple exchanged almost daily. In addition, the author skillfully deconstructs the second Mrs. Wilson’s 1939 memoir ... Roberts’s storytelling soars as she leads the reader through Edith’s machinations to hide her husband’s disabilities while maintaining his White House’s functions.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
