About this Event
East City Bookshop welcomes Lois Romano to discuss her book, An Inconvenient Widow: The Torment, Trial, and Triumph of Mary Todd Lincoln, in conversation with Carl Hulse.
Note on Format: This hybrid event will have both an in-person component with limited seating as well as a virtual broadcast via Zoom Webinar. Both in-person and virtual attendees will be able to pose questions to the author during audience Q&A.
Pre-order your copy of An Inconvient Widow for the event in Eventbrite check-out as an add-on to your ticket.
ABOUT AN INCONVIENT WIDOW
A revelatory new biography of one of the most misunderstood and vilified First Ladies in American history: Mary Todd Lincoln.
Mary Lincoln was at the center of politics at a time when society’s expectations for women were rigid and circumscribed. The product of Southern aristocracy, she grew up among an influential clan of politicians and elites who founded Lexington, Kentucky. Mary’s early exposure to the male-dominated world of politics instilled in her a keen political acumen and a fierce ambition. Proclaiming as a child that she was destined to become the wife of a president, she played a crucial role in boosting her husband to greatness.
But her hopes for a triumphant experience at the pinnacle of power were lost to the Civil War and unfathomable family tragedies. Still, Mary persevered. She steadfastly supported the Union war effort, visited encampments, tended to wounded soldiers, and generously donated money and gifts to refugees from slavery. She was an unconventional, larger-than-life character who dressed too ostentatiously, grieved too publicly, suffered a shopping addiction, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. She made enemies—influential men who wrote her story for her, often unfairly. After Lincoln was assassinated, she was all but abandoned by the nation he had given his life to defend and preserve.
Former Washington Post writer and columnist Lois Romano rectifies the tortured legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood—by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally, by history. Romano draws on hundreds of archives, letters, and memoirs to provide the most complete portrait—of not simply of an inconvenient widow, but of a brilliant and flawed woman, who possessed uncommon tenacity in the face of extraordinary adversity and personal torment, and helped launch one of America’s greatest presidents.
Lois Romano is a national journalist who was an editor, columnist, and reporter for The Washington Post and Politico. Her new book, a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, will be published by Simon & Schuster in May. She is best known for her in-depth coverage of American political culture for major outlets, where her reporting combined rigor, insight, and narrative clarity.
Carl Hulse is the Chief Washington Correspondent of The New York Times and an acknowledged authority on the U.S. Congress and national political affairs. He is the author of "Confirmation Bias:Inside Washington's War Over the Supreme Court," a critically acclaimed account of the history-making partisan battle over the makeup of the high court and the federal judiciary. He is a native of Ottawa, Ill., in the heart of the Land of Lincoln
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
East City Bookshop, 645 Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast, Washington, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 43.34
