First Ladies by Susan Swain and C-Span

This is basically the transcript of interviews with different experts about the various ladies, so it reads differently from other books. 

I really can say that the only first ladies that I knew anything at all about prior to this book were Abigail Adams, Rachel Jackson, Mary Todd Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, and Nancy Reagan. 

Of course the ones that have served in that capacity during my lifetime I know nothing about. I'm still catching up on human history which impedes my interest in current events. Then there are those things adults repeat which stay in your mind. I remember as an eleven year old interjecting myself into an adult conversation saying "Barbara Bush is really the boss." If it was an original statement it would have been precocious indeed, but I'm sure I was just repeating something I had heard. 

This was a fascinating read. If I could go back in time though and visit with a first lady it would still be Rachel Jackson who never actually even made it to the white house. She died of a heart attack - perhaps related to the stress of being harangued, insulted, and scandalized due to the circumstances surrounding her second marriage to the romantic, daring, and undeniably patriarchal husband Andrew - a complicated character who is forever aligned with the trail of tears but who himself adopted a cherokee boy. Perhaps I am swayed by my childhood visit with my grandparants to their home the Hermitage during a magical stay in Nashville TN, a city that seemed ancient compared to my California surroundings, and where I first heard the tale of Andrew and Rachels' troubled but seemingly close union. It reminds me of my early exposure to Heathcliff and Catherine, but again a rabbit trail. 

Of the first ladies in general, this reading reinforced my unwillingness to proffer unthoughtful criticism of people in positions of leadership - so many difficult things to navigate and so many feathers to ruffle no matter what. Truly, blessed are the thick skinned dwellers of the White House. These ladies, for the most part were amazing examples of tenacity, energy, and perserverance. 

This is what Allida Black says of Eleanor "During her 1943 tour of American troops in the Pacific, Eleanor flew over in an uninsulated military aircraft. her eardrum shatters. She goes deaf in one ear. She will walk fifty miles of hospital corridors in two days. The arches will fall on her feet. She will never be able to stand again without special shoes. This trip changes Eleanor Roosevelt. She begins to carry a prayer in her wallet that says "Dear Lord lest I continue in my complacent ways, help me to remember that somewhere someone died for me today. And if there be war, help me to remember to ask and to answer, am I worth dying for?"