>> thank you very much, dell. it's wonderful to be here. it's very heartening for a writer to see so many readers in >> is wonderful to be here. very heartening for a right here to see so many readers together in one place but of course, writers are first and foremost, readers and when i started the project enough, i firstetel forgot the rule of to being a good reader and never judge a book by its cover

price has seen pictures of woodrow wilson and i came to the conclusion he was cerebral, cool and cool, that he was a stern , she was a power-hungry woman when woodrow wilson had awh stroke, she was a secret woman president. fortunately, i live right her

here in washington d.c. and just up the hill behind us is the library of congress.the the sponsor of this great event. is a temple of learning andrn a fabulous three source for the researchers. so i started to read woodrow wilson's letters to ellen in 1883 just after they becames. a gauge. b they had a two year engagingly and wrote hundreds of letters. what i discovered it is yes, he was very cerebral blood far from cool. he was very romantic and passionate. soon after their engagement, he wrote tno herwr i am not a boy in the longer.

longer. it is less for you to teach me that fast and measurable difference to train a youth fancy and demands over austrian laws. and sometimes absolutely absolutely frightened that the intent to give my for you. two years later, just before their marriage, he wrote her, asking her to imagine the warmest of cases pressed down upon the sweetest center of the ellipse. woodrow was not just romantic, however. he was unusually dependent on women for the fulfillment of his own powers. he could not work unless he was assured that a woman he loved loved him also. fortunately, alan was the perfect partner for woodrow wilson. she loved him very much and she

told him so eloquently. she was a very unusual woman for her time and place. she corrupt after the civil war in a small town in georgia and was unusually well-educated. her father was a presbyterian minister and alan was an avid reader. it was said she could find an apt quotation for any occasion. she also had abundant artistic talents. her work had won a prize at an exposition in paris and by the time she was 23, she concluded she was never going to find a man who could live up to her ideals. she decided that she and her friends would open a women's boardinghouse and they would support it with her artwork. people began to call her alley at the man hater. and met woodrow wilson.

i fell in love and got married. allen was not only a loving wife, she was a capable housemate. woodrow wilson was at really a fan, but he may have suffered from a learning disorder. he was almost 12 before he learned how to read. he had great difficulty in learning foreign languages, so alan learned german in order to translate the political monographs that he needed for his research. she also made digests of political science books in english for him. with her help, he achieved the first of his ambitions, which was to be a professor at his alma mater in princeton, untreated university. once he became a professor at princeton, he was a popular professor. he began to be invited to make speeches and she helped him a

great deal of his speeches as well, providing those apt quotations when he needed them. he was invited to give a very important speech for the 150th anniversary, the founding of princeton. and they collaborated closely on that speech. we found manuscripts with corrections in both the buyer and ratings and at one point she said, the ending is a little slack. you need to make it soar. you should read a poem by john nelson. she told him which poem to read. if you compare that to the speech, you can see it's exactly what he did. the speech is all of metaphors that obviously came from her experience about art in domestic affairs. don not

>> and to think in a career of public service which is what he

really always wanted. and but in 1906 with his rosy prospect ahead of them -- 49 years old. and that he might have to give up his career entirely. there was no medication for homework they told him he would

poe

became completely infatuated with merry pack but then that summer allen went to an artist colony in connecticut. she had given up for our wap

in order to devore eight days to go herself tot woodrow wilson now took it up again to have the part of her life not entwined with his back out he wrote a herd letters all summer beguine to be forgiven we don't know what she wrote because all of her letters are missing the think she probably burned them. but at the end of thisll h summer woodrow what day schroder a very happy letter and obviously she hadf th forgiven him when he said it as is even better to be loved if you don't deserve it. do think he would stop? no. as soon as he got back to the united states he and alan went to massachusetts where merion lived with her husband in this summer. i don't know why she didet that it could be that she

wanted to see her rival. she wanted married to see how her to know she had a better claim on him. or that she wanted to protect woodrow wilson's because he had a politicalt career ahead of him. she pretended mary pack was a family friend. sure enough and once again ellen rose to the occasion in. and a.k.a. municipal housekeeping arguing that households that could clean up their community. this is considered an alternative to this theory idea of women voting. said shethhe began to investigate the state institution.me

is a ground-breaking move on her part. the woodrow wilson administration was such a success he was speaking ofw' as a presidential candidates.s allen recognize there was a big obstacle to his running for president. william jennings bryan who had been the democraticwood nominee for president and who woodrow had insulted publicly years before so she range to have a very intimate dinner with bright and and sure enough woodrow found that he liked brian and they spoke from the same platform after that.im she did as she had done beforeke continue to see mary

as a family friend. woodrow began to traveler of the country making speeches following the progress very closely sending telegrams and at one. point* said stop saying you are not running for president and makes you foolish and he stopped. sure enough he became the democratic nominee in june of 1912 with the help of brian but that summer when the republicans held there convention, william howard taft was opposed by former president roosevelt taft won and roosevelt was so bitter that he formed a third party, the progressive for bull moose party and was seen as a bigger competitor

to wilson and was so popular. one of roosevelt's adviserspopu said we managed to obtain some letters. you should publish them and this campaign will be over. and roosevelt's said no. that would be wrong also said nobody would believe meyo. he looks like he ought to berkin working in a drugstore. who thinks he is a romeo? [laughter] he did not publish them and he won. the beginning of 1913 ellen found herself in the white house. not a place she ever wanted to be but once there she felt she had to use it for the maximum benefit prepare she began to be interested,

in what we would now call urban renewal there was a maze of alleyways that bred crime and it to cease and full of dilapidated houses, but at that time the federal government was running the d district and wanted fed administration to tear down the house is to build modern titanic houses. she got a white house car and began to take members of congress around that rallied to show them the squalor right around the capitol building. she was the first first lady to lobby outside of the white house for a cause not on her husband's agenda. but in the second year of the woodrow wilsonou term, her

health began to decline. and by june of 1914 she could no longer get out of beg bet. her doctor was in denial and thought she was suffering from nerves.or w woodrow wilson was distracted because the end of june the archduke of austria but was assassinated the international saturation was going to pieces. by august 6 it was clear allen was dying. two days after all of the european powers had declared war on each other. allied new she was running out of time so she made to final requests. the first was to her husband's chief of staff to please go up to capitol hill to tell the congressmen she

would die more easily issues if they would just pass valley legislation. the senatel ul tech action right away in time before she lost consciousness. the bill was passed but never implemented with the onset of world war i if they needed all the buildings they could have dilapidated or not and more important things to think about.id her second request was to the white house physician. doctor, please come and take s care of my husband and then she died. o woodrow wandered the halls of the warehouse and told one correspondent he was reading detective stories and may get drunk just to forget. you might have thought he would turn to marry but due pressures of the

presidency come with their relationship had cooled and in any case, that would have confirmed the rumors about them. he was a loan. by the spring of 1915 the doctor became worried the world was at war and his patient was the president he introduced a friend of his name e death to the president.f she was a widow in a private -- prop. that we15 y remember fondly known as tiffany's of washington 15 years younger and vivacious and gyrfalcons and flirtatious. the first night she came to dine at the white house with a long down the secret service said she is a looker. the ballet said he is a

goner. s [laughter] and he was.r. he proposed marriage two months later and she refused and said they did not know each other long enough and it had not been one year of a minimum amount of time before remarriage but woodrow did not give up and invited the t death to vacation with him and his three grown daughters and he. proposed again. yea this time she accepted. but they kept the agency great because it still had not been one year since the death of ellen. another wrinkle to this saga was married. woodrow confessed to edith that he called his relationship with mary a folly long ago and repented

of. she for gave him but she made sure it was over. they announced thefo engagement october 1915 even before they got married, woodrow took her into his confidence and wanted her to share everyhey aspect of his work. secret state department's documents and annotated for her understanding. she loved that. she would like to say i love the way you put one deere hand on mine but the other you turn the pages of history. they got married at the end of december 1915. 1916 was election year and edith campaigned with him. she was a big asset because she warmed up hisn. austere

image. in november woodrow wilson was nearly reelected using the slogan he kept us out of the war. but shortly after the inauguration, the germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and the united states was drawn into world war i. edith changed almost completely. she volunteered in a red cross canteen handing out coffee and sandwiches as they came to union station in. she really liked anything to do with woodrow she named battleships when he had to use sign commissions for new officers she made a game of it with being away one paper

to put another one down in front of him to see how many they could do it in our and even decoded the telegrams coming from a year up.puow arguably her most important job was keeping their president healthy prayer every day dragging him out to play golf. they were both terrible but they enjoyed it.th november 11, 1918, of the war ended. t woodrow made the surprising decision to go to europe himself to negotiate the peace treaty. the first sitting president to go to europe issue was the first presiding first lady to go. they were greeted like he rose and then by throngs of people throwing flowers and cheering them and they say that buckingham palace, she wrote to it was like a

cinderella existence. once the negotiations began coming things got tough. woodrow health began to suffer. finally come in june in the treaty of versailles was signed am provided for a b nations, an international body to mediate disputes but when he brought the treaty back to the united states to be the ratified by the senate, they refused. they were jealous of the constitutional prerogative to declare war and were afraid the league of nations would oblige them when they did not want to. they wanted to add amendments and woodrow wanted the document ratified has written. he undertook a speaking tour by train all across the united states and back september, hot, no air conditioning in the model cars. he was speaking everyr.co

day, sometimes more than once.. as they return from spe california going through the rocky mountains the altitude was on his blood pressure and then he collapsed in pueblo colorado. they raced back to washington but it was too late for a few-- later he suffered a massive stroke. he was paralyzed he could hardly speak. nobody knew what his mentalhe faculties were like in as president he was completely incapacitated. edith made the decision to carry on. doing when no other first lady has done before or since but instructed the white house staff and his doctors to keep his condition a secret. said and she decided what

would happen next.tr the next 18 months, the rest of his term she characterizes it as her stewardship and you could see woodrow wilson, what issues would be brought before him.ro mostlyw she just deferred things and wanted to wait until he would recover and was implored to take more action for the sake of the country and she said i am not thinking about the country.he i am thinking about my husband. some people say that had she allowed woodrow wilson more access to his advisor scum they would have changed his mind and got him to compromise on the league of nations.

we discovered edith herself wanted woodrow wilson to compromise is she thought his failure to do so would sork his place in history but she urged him gently in win the he resisted she did not insist. she did what he wanted. they stayed in office until the end of his term of march 1921. they're left the white house and settled in washington, the only president to have done that after leaving office. l three years later he died.eavi after his death edith had opportunity to run for office herself. she never took it. she was not interested in public office or political power and never proposed new legislation and did not think women even ought to vote. i began the project a dnin thing

that e diss was the past breaker the secret woman president. but i discovered elan is the one that shaped history she was the innovator in her husband's administration there was an assistant secretary to the navy franklin delano roosevelt and his wife eleanor was a younecg wife who sometimes visited the white house and in new allen. after ellen's death, no subsequent first lady lobbied for legislation until eleanor roosevelt entered the white house march 1933 during her first week, she went up to capitol hill and began to lobby for the alley bill as we all know she lobbied for a dst lot

of things and after her her, most first ladies have felt they could and should have a cause of their own. this book festival was founded by laura bush whose cause was libraries and literacy. arguably, a direct connection between fell in wilson and where we are today.

in the white house and mary pack wanted to but she endedthe up in a boardinghouse, edith and add an invalid in the white house. budget ellen could have been speaking for all three of them when she wrote at the end of her life, this has been the most remarkable history i have even read about. to think that i have lived it with you, i wonder if i am dreaming. and will wake up to find myself married to a bank of clark. thank you very much. [applause]

>> we do have the few minutes if you would like to ask a question seven mengele lourdes to reading your but. i only read a couple of biographies of will sendread most recently of hisple childhood home.mo and i sawst fayed documentary about women's suffrage but he would let women be jailed for protesting at the white house. a number of people were imprisoned on hunger strikes and he comes across as a southern gentlemen who had racism and anti-sexism as part of his nature. it is surprising to hear he was as dependent on women as your book demonstrates. onhave any comments these weaknesses of his?

>> thank you very much. a good observation.co it was a sign of the times. many women themselves did not approve of the vote their two branches of the women's suffrage and no i discoverednt in the course of my researchd she wa is received in the white houseon they were not picketing by trying to do it through political action. he respected that and wanted to encourage that. i had not known that before i started researching the wilson papers. budget he did was more indignant. he used to invite the pictures into the house during cold weather for coffee and when they refuse toorroe come in, edith had a fi.

she thought that was terribly rude to refuse the gentlemanly overtures for crop that would undercut the point* of course, we understand all the not a big apologist. a i certainly think of the women in his life were extremely admirable. ellen herself was a great she was and recognized by the leading african-american newspaper at that time, after her death, they said if only of poor white women could be as active as she is to try to ameliorate the conditions of the african-american a community in washington, we

would get ahead further but everybody it was part of the in culture of his administration. thank you. >> thank you for writing this book is very'a interesting. what happened to the death after his death? any federalio support or pension for her? >> good question in she lived another 38 years. at the time she died in 1961, she was teenine. by the way she died on woodrow wilson's birthday which gives me goose bumps. definite 10n chin policy to the widows

and had to be negotiatedensi year by year basis and i think eventually it was established by in the beginning it was a little bit -- sepracor she had been quite wealthy before she had that flourishing jewelry store all the oil that took a hit during the depression andw. she did economize, she did all right. jurin she never had children and she donated her house near dupont circle for the trust is a little time capsule museum of life in the 1920's. that is a great local place to visit. >> do we have any indication of ellen illness? >> it is called bright's disease which was the

catchall phrase for kidney trouble. she was first diagnosed during her third pregnancy in 18 teenine. k but they did not have a lot of medicine or treatment for that and she probably would have succumbed to kidney diseases in any case woodrow was feeling very guilty thinking it was the pressure of the white house but she wouldy always get kidney disease. that is what she died of. >> will you talk about the course of your research mentioning the library of congress, what documents did you come across? if you knew you were looking for zero or the founding as you did not expect? >> i could not have done it of my athe help research assistant robert

mcginnis and also the fabulous annotated collective letters and papers of woodrow wilson edited by arthur link and published by princeton, the 69le volumes. the originals in the library of congress on microfilm but thinks to that book, that is also a resources but some of mic the death and ellen papers. one of the most poignantmong among ellen ruutu notes she wrote to margaret her oldest daughter of the few days before she died and said the doctors say i will get better but i don't feel that i will get better perk ratiocinate ed my nights are so full of pain. it was heartbreaking to read those.er and it was very magical.

all of the diss papers are there and many were not collected because the woodrow wilson in papers stop at his death and she n has another 38 years. the papers those were very key and i also need to haveve a big shout out to all ofisk those who dealt because they were just wonderful. you will find a great team if you have to do research there. >> thank you for your attribute but could you talk about the three daughters if any with all of their mother's footsteps with advocacy? >> great question. senior. was ate

accounts defer but we felt at the end of the day she probably did not have a lotgh of talent and people were nice to her because her dad was president and eventually that dawned on her because eventually she lived in india where she died. the second daughter jessie, married a lawyer named franken there son became dean of the washington cathedral the very beloved figure in washington and woodrow wilson in the death are buried at the cathedral so there is that nice connection. the youngest daughter married one of woodrow wilson and cabinet members, considerably older than her. they had children and later divorced and he married somebody even younger. thhee middle one was the

closest to her mother was active in the settlement house movement and used to argue with allen -- ellen about women's suffrage and felt women should have the votes and ellen did not want to say something contrary to what her husband had said that she said she thought atethi least a working women should have the boat too.av >>e i was intrigued of the diss role after her husband is sounds like she was a surrogate president. was there any debates at that time about will sin been declared incompetent and the vice president taking over and a few words speculate what that would mean for our history? >> the big question in two minutes.ul t

i will do my best. yes. no two ways about it for she was deceptive a committee of two senators came to see his condition when democrats and one republican and she and the doctor orchestrated the the wing of woodrow to have him seen at his bestch advantage completely in hoodwinked the senator saying he was doing just c fine but he could hardly get out of bet s. she was duplicitous about that it would have made a huge difference if she had not lied to the american people basically about his condition. she knew that he wanted to stay in office and only cared about what he wanted and was not thinking about the country. certainly if he had resigned the vice president would

have taken over. he would have compromised and we would have joined theth league of nations and the question gets tricky. with that have made a difference? some people say yes if we had commonst than there would not have been rolled or to. there was whine and we were not in it but it didn't do anything to stop world war ii. 1937 there wasd a great study that showed 70 percent of the gallup poll of the american people thought it had been a mistake to go into world war i. we were a very isolationist country at that time. even if we join the league of nations it would happen with the amendments that meant we did not have to do whatever they determined. i don't take it would have

made any difference. there are plenty of wilson's i d dollars and some disagree thede argument on the other side i refer you to a wonderful biography ofrgum cooper that came out a couple years ago. he is very eloquent for the other side. thank you for coming. . . >> here is my question. i'd is written in a breezy style and has an optimism to hit a new ride at one point* and i am quoting come with the innovative capitalist culture will allow us to make a houdini style escape

from climate change most devastating impact. what makes you so sure of that? >> my mother always told me to avoid wishful thinking. and i always try to be provocative to see if people are awake. i take climate change jerry seriously and now that my two minutes is up. imf good jokes. [laughter] i aid to take climate change a very seriously. my optimism, the core of my optimism i don't want you to think i am naive but when we anticipated challenge, our mind in the world of 7 million or perhaps 9 billion, if enough of us are scared and aware of the challenge climate change poses some of