Edith Bolling was born in Wytheville, Virginia, in 1872, the seventh of eleven children in a proud family fallen from planter wealth. Kept home to care for a bedridden grandmother in a room crowded with twenty-six canaries, she learned pragmatic control and quick judgment rather than academic theory. Widowed young, she ran her late husband's jewelry business at a profit before marrying President Woodrow Wilson in December 1915.

As First Lady during World War I she led by visible example with meatless days and sheep grazing the White House lawn. After Wilson suffered a severe stroke in October 1919, she orchestrated a top-down cover-up, screening all correspondence for roughly eighteen months in what she called her stewardship. Critics argue she effectively acted as an unelected chief executive, forcing a cabinet resignation and shaping poli ...