The DOI Reads Book Club

When:

Thursday, September 11, 2025
12:30 PM  |  (UTC-04:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)  |  1 hour

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This WebEx service includes a feature that allows audio and any documents and other materials exchanged or viewed during the meeting to be recorded. By joining this meeting, you automatically consent to such recordings. If you do not consent to the recording, discuss your concerns with the meeting host prior to the start of the recording or do not join the meeting. Please note that any such recordings may be subject to discovery in the event of litigation.
 

Where:

Join from the meeting link:
https://usdeptoftheinteriorlibrary.my.webex.com/usdeptoftheinteriorlibrary.my/j.php?MTID=ma2de91037701a3a174184300dadab21c

Join by meeting number
Meeting number (access code): 2554 974 5226
Meeting password: m35eXJsgx3J

To join from a mobile device (attendees only)
+1-408-418-9388,,25549745226## United States Toll
 

Join by phone
+1-408-418-9388 United States Toll

Global call-in numbers

Join from a video system or application
Dial 25549745226@webex.com
You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number.
 

Need help? Go to https://help.webex.com
 

The DOI Reads Book Club will again be meeting virtually on Thursday, September 11, 2025, from 12:30 to 1:30 pm ET to discuss our next Book Club selection,  Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson by Rebecca Boggs Roberts.

As always, all are welcome and you don't need to finish the book to join us. Just bring your questions, insights and thoughts about this book.

Advance RSVPs are very welcome, but all are encouraged to come regardless. To RSVP or for more information about the DOI Reads Book Club and other DOI Library programs and events, please contact the library staff via email (library@ios.doi.gov) or phone at 202-208-5815. 

At the time of the program please join from the meeting link above to view the webinar. To join our audio via phone you will also need to dial into the Audio Connection, using the phone number listed. If prompted for an access code, please enter 2554 974 5226.

The DOI Library does not have enough copies to lend this book to everyone, so please purchase a copy or borrow one from your local library. Copies are available from online booksellers.

Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson     
Author:  Rebecca Boggs Roberts
Publisher‏: ‎ Viking (March 2023)
Hardcover: ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10: ‎ 0593489993    

A nuanced portrait of the first acting woman president, written with fresh and cinematic verve by a leading historian on women’s suffrage and power.

While this nation has yet to elect its first woman president—and though history has downplayed her role—just over a century ago a woman became the nation’s first acting president. In fact, she was born in 1872, and her name was Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. She climbed her way out of Appalachian poverty and into the highest echelons of American power and in 1919 effectively acted as the first woman president of the U.S. (before women could even vote nationwide) when her husband, Woodrow Wilson, was incapacitated. Beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, catty, and calculating, she was a complicated figure whose personal quest for influence reshaped the position of First Lady into one of political prominence forever. And still nobody truly understands who she was.

For the first time, we have a biography that takes an unflinching look at the woman whose ascent mirrors that of many powerful American women before and since, one full of the compromises and complicities women have undertaken throughout time in order to find security for themselves and make their mark on history. She was a shape-shifter who was obsessed with crafting her own reputation, at once deeply invested in exercising her own power while also opposing women’s suffrage. With narrative verve and fresh eyes, Untold Power is a richly overdue examination of one of American history’s most influential, complicated women as well as the surprising and often absurd realities of American politics.

-- from Amazon

 

Was this page helpful?

Please provide a comment