• The Firsts

    by Jennifer Steinhauer
    Price $27.95
    Hardcover
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    The Firsts
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April 13, 2020

Jennifer Steinhauer

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes New York Times reporter JENNIFER STEINHAUER for a discussion of her latest book, The Firsts: The Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress. She will be joined in conversation by fellow Times reporter KATHARINE Q. SEELYE. This event is co-sponsored by Cambridge Women's Center.

Details

In November 2018, the greatest number of women in American history entered Congress. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “the Squad” to “the Badasses” with national security backgrounds, from the first two Native Americans in Congress to the first two Muslim women, all were swept into office on a wave of grassroots support, diverse in background, age, professional experience, and ideology.

In The FirstsNew York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer follows these women’s first year in the 116th Congress, chronicling their transition from running trailblazing campaigns to the daily work of governance. In committee rooms, offices, and conversations on the run through the halls of the Capitol, she probed the question: Would Washington, with its hidebound traditions, change the changemakers, or would this Congress, which looked a little more like today’s America, truly be the start of something new?

Vivid and smart, The Firsts delivers fresh details, inside access, historical perspective, and expert analysis as these women—inspiring, controversial, talented, and rebellious—do something truly surprising: make Congress essential again.

About Author(s)

Jennifer Steinhauer has covered numerous high-profile beats in her twenty-five-year reporting career at the New York Times, from City Hall bureau chief and Los Angeles bureau chief to Capitol Hill. She won the Newswoman’s Club of New York Front Page Deadline Reporting Award in 2006 for her reporting on Hurricane Katrina. She has written a novel about the television business, and two cookbooks.

Katharine Q. “Kit” Seelye has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1994. She started in the Washington bureau as a political reporter and was “on the bus” for six presidential campaigns. She also pioneered The Times’s online coverage of politics. In 2012 she was named the paper’s New England bureau chief, based in Boston. She recently joined the paper’s legendary obituary staff. She lives in Cambridge.