Untold power The fascinating rise and complex legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson

Historian Roberts (Suffragists in Washington) delivers a solid biography of first lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (1872--1961). The seventh of 11 children from a Confederate family in Virginia, Edith met Woodrow Wilson at the White House in 1915. She was a widow and he a widower, and the two married later that year, though Edith thought "the role of White House hostess was absurd," with its "unworkable mix of inscrutable rules and constant public attention." Roberts credits Edith with modernizing the role of first lady, noting that she was the first to stand behind the president when he took the oath of office and to travel abroad in her husband's name. More controversially, Edith hid the extent of Wilson's disability after a stroke in October 1919 left him "bedridden, half-paralyzed, and often incoherent." Serving as her husband's steward for more than a year, Edith chose which matters to bring to his attention, though she claimed to have never made a decision on his behalf. As Roberts succinctly puts it, Edith became "the most powerful woman in the nation," while pretending to be "nothing of the kind." Enriched with incisive sketches of the era's political figures, including socialite Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and concise history lessons on the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations, and more, this is a rich portrait of a singular first lady. (Mar.)

In The Long Reckoning, award-winning investigative journalist Black (The Good Neighbor) chronicles the efforts of U.S. veterans, scientists, and pacifists and their Vietnamese partners to compel the U.S. government to acknowledge the ongoing damage done by unexploded munitions and the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam, particularly in the demilitarized zone. From notable U.S.-based Dutch writer/editor Buruma (The Churchill Complex), The Collaborators examines three figures seen as either heroes or traitors during World War II: Hasidic Jew Friedrich Weinreb, who took money to save fellow Jews but betrayed some of them to the Gestapo; Manchu princess Kawashima Yoshiko, who spied for the Japanese secret police in China; and masseur Felix Kersten, who claimed to have talked Himmler out of killing thousands. Oxford associate professor Healey's The Blazing World portrays 17th-century England as a turbulent society undergoing revolutionary change. A professor of politics and global health at Queen Mary University of London, Kennedy argues in Pathogenesis that it was not human guts and ingenuity but the power of disease-delivering microbes that has driven human history, from the end of the Neanderthals to the rise of Christianity and Islam to the deadly consequences of European colonialism (75,000-copy first printing). Continuing in the vein of his New York Times best-selling The Princess Spy, Loftis introduces us to Corrie ten Boom, The Watchmaker's Daughter, who helped her family hide Jews and refugees from the Gestapo during World War II (100,000-copy first printing). Mar's Seventy Times Seven chronicles Black 15-year-old Paula Cooper's murder of septuagenarian white woman Ruth Pelke in a violent home invasion in 1985 Gary, IN; her subsequent death sentence; and what happened when Pelke's grandson forgave her. Journalist/consultant Roberts fully reveals the Untold Power of Woodrow Wilson's wife Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, who effectively acted as president when her husband was incapacitated. A best seller in the UK when it was published in 2021, Sanghera's Empireland--an exploration of the legacy of British imperialism in the contemporary world--has been contextualized for U.S. audiences and carries an introduction by Marlon James. In Benjamin Banneker and Us, Webster explores the life of her forbear, the Black mathematician and almanac writer who surveyed Washington, DC, for Thomas Jefferson, and his descendants to highlight how structural racism continues to shape our understanding of lineage and family.