Rating: 
Summary: Good fluffy book
Review: I enjoyed this fascinating book and learned more about first ladies that I didn't know. The author leaves out the dull parts and puts in the interesting ones. To me the most interesting was learning how much power Nancy Reagan had. The author also had a way of revitalizing dull and worn subjects aka JFK infidelity and Hillary Clinton, using fresh words and a fresh vantage point. No cliches here or boring parts but instead lots of juicy nuggets. I've always thought the first ladies were the most interesting ones and this book confirms it. Alas poor Mamie Eisenhower was not included. I'd like to write a book called "Women who Wielded Power from Bed" and include Florence Nightengale and Mamie.
Rating:
Summary: Good fluffy book
Review: I enjoyed this fascinating book and learned more about first ladies that I didn't know. The author leaves out the dull parts and puts in the interesting ones. To me the most interesting was learning how much power Nancy Reagan had. The author also had a way of revitalizing dull and worn subjects aka JFK infidelity and Hillary Clinton, using fresh words and a fresh vantage point. No cliches here or boring parts but instead lots of juicy nuggets. I've always thought the first ladies were the most interesting ones and this book confirms it. Alas poor Mamie Eisenhower was not included. I'd like to write a book called "Women who Wielded Power from Bed" and include Florence Nightengale and Mamie.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging Overview
Review: I picked this book up at the airport and was pleasantly surprised. It covers a selection of presidential marriages and presents a balanced overview of each. I enjoyed reading each chapter and it made me more interested in a couple of our past presidents that I didn't know much about.
Rating: 
Summary: Marton takes a look at "hidden power" of White House Couples
Review: I rarely read books about politics or political figures, even though my main interest in the non-fiction realm -- military history -- is, in essence, an account of political decisions gone wrong. When I do read books about Presidents, it's usually about the Cold War (The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khruschev -- 1960-1963) or specific events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis or that awful day in Dallas.
Very rarely, though, do I read books about the personal lives of America's Chief Executives. I used to, as a schoolboy, read very generic accounts of those few Presidents I found interesting (Washington, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, Ike, and JFK), but as I grew older I became less a generalist history buff and became more of a World War II/Cold War/Persian Gulf War specialist. Still, sometimes it's beneficial to step away from the familiar and explore uncharted territory from time to time.
Kati Marton's 2001 book Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History is one such sally from my familiar Stephen Ambrose/Cornelius Ryan fortress of historical reading. It's a selection of 12 short biographical sketches of 20th Century Presidents and their First Ladies, with a strong emphasis on the post-Eisenhower White House "power couples" from the Kennedys on to George W. and Laura Bush. (Ike and Mamie, incidentally, are not interesting enough for Marton to have a chapter of their own, and neither are most of the Presidential couples between the Wilson and Roosevelt Administrations. Whether it's because those pairings are too bland or because most of those were Republican, I can't discern for sure.)
To be honest, I found Marton's book to be well-written but not terribly engaging. Maybe it's because the post-1960 couples are all-too-familiar to me -- I've heard far too much about how Jackie Kennedy thought her marriage was finally getting better by the time of that fateful trip to Dallas, or about Betty Ford's struggles with alcohol dependency, or the backlash to Hillary Clinton's "unlimited partnership" with Bill -- but I only really enjoyed the first two chapters about Edith and Woodrow Wilson and Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt. I found the image of the seemingly cold and stern Wilson acting like a lovesick teenager when he was courting the much younger woman who would become his second wife, a woman who, if truth be told, was actually more of a co-President of the United States than "mere" First Lady as a result of her husband's debilitating stroke after World War I and Wilson's efforts to create the League of Nations.
Because FDR's story dovetails nicely with my interest in World War II (and also because he was the country's first disabled Chief Executive, though much effort was expended to keep that from the public as much as possible back then), I really liked The Partnership That Changed the World, the chapter on Eleanor and Franklin. Of all the First Ladies of the 20th Century, Eleanor seems to me the most interesting, considering that led such an extraordinary life at a crucial point in American history. Homely -- a Jackie Kennedy or even Hillary look-alike she wasn't -- and living with the knowledge that Franklin had had an affair with one of her best friends, nevertheless she stayed by her husband's side -- if not in an intimate manner -- and became one of his socially aware "eyes and ears" advisers, particularly on issues of race and poverty. Her newspaper column and many public appearances -- even in far-flung areas in the South Pacific and elsewhere during World War II -- made her one of the iconic figures of the era and possibly one of the most admired First Ladies in American history.
Rating: 
Summary: Contemporary history written to maintain reader interest
Review: I was excited to read this book since I majored in history, but right from the beginning I found this book lacking in many respects. First, she doesn't seem to follow any type of chronology when outlining events and in some cases is totally inaccurate. I found it quite irritating to be bouncing around within a presidency. Her writing is totally lacking in all respects. Poor research of some subjects. She clearly is a "Clintonite" and to me, her sole purpose in writing this books was to get to the Clinton administration so she could help them make more excuses for their behaviour. I also got the feeling that she enjoyed making the Republican wives sound like back-stabbing, mean-spirited women while the Democratic wives were saints. However, I do have to admit that she wrote about the Nixon marriage in way that made me cry for Pat Nixon. I do not recommend this book if you are truly interested in history. If you want fluff, and biased reporting of recent events, then waste the money and read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Biased and a lot of historical inaccuracies
Review: I was excited to read this book since I majored in history, but right from the beginning I found this book lacking in many respects. First, she doesn't seem to follow any type of chronology when outlining events and in some cases is totally inaccurate. I found it quite irritating to be bouncing around within a presidency. Her writing is totally lacking in all respects. Poor research of some subjects. She clearly is a "Clintonite" and to me, her sole purpose in writing this books was to get to the Clinton administration so she could help them make more excuses for their behaviour. I also got the feeling that she enjoyed making the Republican wives sound like back-stabbing, mean-spirited women while the Democratic wives were saints. However, I do have to admit that she wrote about the Nixon marriage in way that made me cry for Pat Nixon. I do not recommend this book if you are truly interested in history. If you want fluff, and biased reporting of recent events, then waste the money and read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Contemporary history written to maintain reader interest
Review: Kati Morton has done a truly outstanding job in her presentation on how various First Ladies in recent American history have had an influence not only on their spouses but also on the political events in modern America.Those reviewers who claimed a bias that was prejudical to Republicans are not able to see the forest through the trees. The author is not be blamed for the fact that so many of the Republican First Ladies have not been particularly exciting women who were interested in making a contribution to America from their unique White House advantage point. This has more to do with the fact that Republican men who seek the Presidency have obviously selected women who prefer the traditional housewife role or in the case of Nancy Reagan are controlling and domineering personalities. All Americans should read this book because it provides a fascinating insight into the evolution of the American agenda. The only negative is that the Eisenhower marriage was not covered in the well-researched book. In the Introduction there are a few sentences that identify that the Ike and Mamie Eisenhower were not discussed but the explanation does not identify explicitly why this one couple was not included in the contemporary history.
Rating: 
Summary: Her witing is as grating as her voice!
Review: My wife was given this book as a gift. I thought i would give it a try. I could not take any more than 1/2 hour of nausea. The witer subjects the reader to a journey of egotistical sermons, Someone should teach her her to take a breath and to tell herself that she does not have all the anwers. What a know-it-all chauvinistic person. I gave the book to my wife and she put it down afte 10 minutes. I then asked her what she had done wrong to the person who gifted her with the book to cause her to be subjected to this diatribe! I wish this woman wou;d stop nd listen to herself. I truly believe she xould stand a degree of humility.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and informational, but quite biased by author
Review: The book covers several presidential marriages of the 20th century. I knew very little about the presidents of the early 1900's, so it was fascinating reading about the marriages and issues of the times. It was clearly written by a writer who is not a historian. As evidenced by her footnotes, her research was based on other peoples books, newspapers and magazines such as Newsweek. She also interviewed a number of presidential spouses herself. The result is an intriguing blend of little-known facts and interesting quotes. However, the author clearly formed personal opinions about each and every spouse in the book. Unfortunately her bias became stronger as the book progressed. By the time I reached the most recent presidential marriages, the book had turned into personal commentary of each presidency rather than the informational book it had been at the start.
Rating:
Summary: Succinct, Entertaining, Insightful
Review: This is more than a study of the evolution of American society than a history per se of Presidential marriages. The one theme - - apart from the relationship between personal and political lives - is how First Ladies viewed and interpreted that most ambiguous of positions. For this is a story told from the point of view of the woman - not the man - and for that reason it is all the more intriguing. Each President has natural strengths but the adage "Behind every successful man is a woman" was never truer. The marriages can be divided into three categories - normal, those that recovered and those that never reconciled. In the first category are Truman, Ford, Bush I, Bush II, Reagan and Carter. Lady Bird and Jackie chose to accept infidelity as part and parcel of the marriage while Roosevelt, Nixon and Clinton committed acts that forever scarred. Indeed, sexual infidelity seems a secondary theme. Eleanor never trusted FDR after her discovery, Jackie sought refuge in other arenas, Lady Bird found a life in other activities and Hillary - the most humiliated of all - found solace in a career apart from her husband. As far as ideological sway, I found very little to challenge. True, the author seemed to praise Democratic administrations more than Republican ones but her personal stories were strictly non-partisan. She would sum up a chapter such as ,"The Clinton Administration is the story of a marriage" or "For Nancy, it was always only Ronnie." She managed to find the essence of the relationship and her conclusions were not only surprising but surprisingly on target.
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