The Presidential Companion: Readings on the First Ladies.

The Presidential Companion: Readings on the First Ladies. Edited by Robert P. Watson and Anthony J. Eksterowicz. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2003, Pp. xvi, 349. $19.95, ISBN 1-57003-461-3.)

While polls attempting to rate presidents vary widely in their rankings, this book demonstrates that even greater variance exists in assessing the importance of first ladies. In The Presidential Companion, eighteen scholars, approximately half political scientists and half historians, have produced fourteen essays that fall into four categories: "Founding and Development of the First Ladyship," "Social and Behind-the-Scenes Influence," "Political and Policy Influence," and "Modern First Ladyship." In spite of the attempted categorization by theme, several first ladies appear prominently in as many as four or five of the essays.

The book as a whole includes a great many facts. On the other hand, there are many redundancies. Historians probably care less about categorization than about the individual subjects. Eleanor Roosevelt is perhaps the single most prominent figure in the text, but she is closely followed by Hillary Clinton, Rosalynn Carter, and Lady Bird Johnson. The reader learns a great deal about each woman. James McCallops's essay on Edith Bolling Gait Wilson may be kinder to her than was some of the testimony that led to the presidential disability portion of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Two of the essays that deal fairly prominently with Betty Ford treat her in rather conventional fashion. Finally, in the fourteenth chapter, "Sharing the Bully Pulpit: Breast Cancer and First Lady Betty Ford's Leadership," Mary Anne Borrelli describes Ford's public acknowledgment of this health issue. Backed by Borelli's close analysis of numerous letters to Ford, the essay makes a very powerful case that this first lady's brave and courageous action brought public awareness and attention to the problem and probably in the end saved many lives.

With regard to another first lady, however, I was deeply disappointed. Historians of American women have highlighted Abigail Adams for her admonition to John to "remember the ladies." Yet this book on the subject of first ladies, including one whole part devoted to "Political and Policy Influence," gives less prominent space to Abigail Adams than it does to each one of the relatively unimportant mid-nineteenth-century first ladies, Sarah Polk, Margaret Taylor, Abigail Fillmore, and Jane Pierce.

David G. McCullough's magnificent John Adams (New York, 2001) covered much familiar material but depended largely on the correspondence of Abigail and John, as well as the many letters Abigail wrote to other leaders of the day. This reliance suggests that, while Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, and Hillary Clinton all played major roles with their husbands in both political and policy matters, probably no other person, male or female, played such a continuous and dominant role in helping to shape the political or policy positions of a president as Abigail Adams.

For readers just starting on the subject, I would recommend The First Ladies, by Margaret Brown Klapthor (Washington, D.C., 1981); First Ladies, by Margaret Truman (New York, 1995); or one of many other single-author books on the topic. Then, for added nuance and possible provocation, readers can turn to The Presidential Companion.

PAUL T. ARMITSTEAD

Taylor University