Inside the East Wing

The first scholarly look at the emergence of the modern FLOTUS as an office in its own rightOver the course of the 1960s and 1970s, the East Wing of the White House—which houses the staff of the first lady—became the professional, organized, and increasingly politically engaged office we know today. From its initial expansion under Jacqueline Kennedy to its formal reorganization under Rosalynn Carter and the passage of the White House Personnel Authorization Act in 1978, the Office of the First Lady emerged in these years as a significant element of the overall White House staff structure.Drawing on extensive and groundbreaking archival research, Elizabeth Rees weaves together the stories of individual influential women and the roles they carved out of the bureaucratic edifice to illustrate how the modern Office of the First Lady came to life. Exploring changing gender roles during the mid-twentieth century and the impact of second-wave feminism, this book repositions the women of the East Wing within the broader context of the presidency, reinstating these often-overlooked professionals to the picture of how the White House and presidential politics function.