Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2023 Adult Nonfiction

AMERICAN WOMAN de Katie Rogers

Through deep reporting and newly discovered correspondence, AMERICAN WOMAN is the first book to paint a full picture of Jill Biden while exploring how she helps answer the evolving question of what the role of the modern First Lady should be.

AMERICAN WOMAN
The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden
by Katie Rogers
Crown, February 2024

Since the Clinton era, shifts in media, politics, and pop culture have all redefined expectations of First Ladies, even as the boundaries set upon them have often remained anachronistic. With sharp insights and dozens of firsthand interviews with major players in the Biden, Obama, Trump, Bush, and Clinton orbits, including Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers traces the evolution of the role of the twenty-first-century First Lady from a ceremonial figurehead to a powerful political operator, which culminates in the tenure of First Lady Jill Biden.

Dr. Jill Biden began her journey toward public life in 1975 as a twenty-three-year-old who caught the eye of a widowed Senator Joe Biden. Recovering from the heartbreak of her failed first marriage, she found a man who was still grieving. She knitted his life together after unspeakable tragedy and stood by his side through three presidential campaigns.

In some ways, her legacy as First Lady was set before she ever entered the White House: She is the first presidential spouse in history to work in a paid role outside the White House, a decision that blazes the path for future first spouses. But as a prime guardian of one of the most insular operations in modern politics, she is also a central part of her husband’s presidential legacy.

Rogers is deeply sourced in the West and East Wings of the White House, and the book will include original interviews with Jill Biden, Hillary Clinton, as well as major figures in the Trump and Obama administrations.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for the New York Times. She covers life in the Biden administration, Washington culture, and a mix of international and domestic policy.

ALL ALONE by Dr. Robert Coplan

In ALL ALONE, Coplan distills over 30 years worth of psychological research on solitude into an accessible, approachable, and endlessly applicable work of popular science.

ALL ALONE
How to Improve Your Relationship with Solitude and Find Your Personal Balance
by Dr. Robert Coplan
Simon & Schuster, early 2025
(via The Whalen Agency)

ALL ALONE works against the myth that being alone is necessarily equivalent to being lonely or being antisocial, instead it argues for an understanding of solitude as a natural, necessary, and beneficial part of a healthy human life. It is a guidebook on how to approach solitude in a healthy way and how to best strike a balance between solitude and socialization at home, in the workplace, in our romantic relationships, as parents, and at different life stages.

After years of people writing passionate essays about the assumed positive value of time alone, it is only in the last few years that researchers have actually been able to produce tangible evidence of such effects. Coplan’s research has contributed to such breakthroughs in the study of solitude including:

• The (somewhat paradoxical) notion that spending time alone helps our relationships with others

• A preliminary finding that spending time alone on your phone can interfere with the positive impacts of solitude

• The finding that children, adolescents, and adults who report that they are not getting enough solitude) tend to report heightened stress, negative moods, and symptoms of depression

• And much more …

In the end, Coplan hopes that by fostering a healthy relationship with solitude, we will come to better understand ourselves, our relationships with others, and our relationship with the world around us.

As a developmental psychologist with over 30 years of experience, Dr. Robert Coplan is a well-established expert in the study of solitude. He has participated in interviews with The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, Vox, Psychology Today, WebMd, and VICE among others and has co-authored five books and hundreds of academic articles on topics ranging from childhood shyness to solitude in adulthood to social withdrawal.