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.

In a culture that constantly tells us to do more of everything but simultaneously pressures us to do nothing, PERMISSION TO REST
As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. Although they were restricted by the confines of political propaganda, Ai Weiwei was struck by the artists’ ability to express their thoughts on art and humanity through graphic storytelling. Now, decades later, Ai Weiwei and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini present ZODIAC, Ai Weiwei’s first graphic memoir.
After years on the financial world’s margins, crypto went mainstream in 2021. Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady and Justin Bieber endorsed it, and Washington bigwigs debated new regulations. It seemed like everyone knew someone who was bragging about their returns from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and other bizarrely named “digital assets.” FOMO spread: Was crypto the new path to financial freedom? Unspoken was that hardly anyone knew how it worked. To borrow a phrase from crypto parlance, the only thing that mattered was “number go up.”