The little-known story of remarkable First Lady Sarah Polk--a brilliant master of the art of high politics and a crucial but unrecognized figure in the history of American feminism. While the Womens Rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman in Washington, D.C. Yet, while history remembers the women of the convention, it has all but forgotten Sarah Polk. Now, in her riveting biography, Amy S. Greenberg brings Sarahs story into vivid focus. We see Sarah as the daughter of a frontiersman who raised her to discuss politics and business with men; we see the savvy and charm she brandished in order to help her brilliant but unlikeable husband, James K. Polk, ascend to the White House. We watch as she exercises truly extraordinary power as First Lady: quietly manipulating elected officials, shaping foreign policy, and directing a campaign in support of Americas expansionist war against Mexico. And we meet many of the enslaved men and women whose difficult labor made Sarahs political success possible. Sarah Polks life spanned nearly the entirety of the nineteenth-century. But her own legacy, which profoundly transformed the South, continues to endure. Comprehensive, nuanced, and brimming with invaluable insight, Lady First is a revelation of our twelfth First Ladys complex but essential part in American feminism.About author(s):Amy S. Greenberg is the George Winfree Professor of History and Womens Studies at Penn State University. A leading scholar of the history of nineteenth-century America, she has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society, among others. Her previous books include A Wicked War and Manifest Manhood.