These books on famous Maryland women are a perfect read for Women s History Month capitalgazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from capitalgazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
"There are men of character in the U.S. Congress, both House and Senate. There are women of character, too. But the evidence for 'character' needs to be
Biden’s tricky tango with Congress
“There are men of character in the U.S. Congress, both House and Senate. There are women of character, too. But the evidence for ‘character’ needs to be something other than the iteration of the word itself,” writes Marjorie Garber in her book “Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession.”
That is a useful frame for trying to make sense of the dramas that proliferated on Capitol Hill this week as Congress took up multiple nominations to President Joe Biden’s Cabinet and held its first hearing on the January 6 insurrection. As Garber notes, the translation of individual traits into a “national character” most often occurs at “times of stress, as a marker not so much of social progress as of social and cultural anxiety.”
Criticized for being a spendthrift and dismissed as hysterical, Mary Lincoln's time as first lady and her role in Abraham Lincoln's presidency remains divisive to this day. Mercurial and vain, the first lady's weaknesses did occasionally outnumber her strengths, writes Catherine Clinton. But her role in Abraham Lincoln's rise to the White House can't be ignored.
The Tubman Twenty is back on track. Elizabeth Cobbs couldn’t be happier.
“This is so long overdue,” the San Diego history professor said as word got out this week that the Biden administration is reviving plans to put 19th century abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the front of a redesigned $20 bill.
Cobbs wasn’t the only one cheered by the news that U.S. paper money will feature a woman for the first time in more than a century, and a Black person for the first time ever.
But few are as well-versed in Tubman’s story as Cobbs is.