An in-depth examination of women and power in Washington through the lens of the complex relationship between First Ladies and their staffs by Pulitzer finalist Azadeh Moaveni.
It could be said that every First Lady runs a court—a hub of political power within the White House, a place where enterprising aides vie for influence and patronage, a theatre of intrigue and counsel where great heights are uniquely possible, but so too is ruin. And the First Lady’s aides are at the center of it all.
Behind the scenes throughout history, East Wing staffers have boldly advanced civil rights legislation, defused tension with America’s enemies, brought more women into government, and backed abortion rights. Their relationships and problems, their management and cultivation of the media landscape and the Georgetown social scene, are at the heart of the forces that have shaped the institution of the East Wing.
In The East Wing, academic and journalist Azadeh Moaveni blends original reporting, including extensive interviews with key players from past East Wings, with expert research and analysis to take readers deep inside the fascinating and high stakes world of the First Lady’s office like never before.
Spanning the most defining decades of the twentieth century, from the New Deal era, to the myth-making Kennedys, to the turbulent, MAGA-influenced 2020s, The East Wing is the captivating true story of the First Lady’s staffers and their role in the executive branch of governance, as well as the evolution of female leadership in our country.
Azadeh Moaveni is Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University, where she directs the program in Global Journalism. She has traveled the world for two decades covering women’s movements across three continents, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, writing extensively about gender and women’s quest for political leadership. She has served as correspondent for TIME magazine and the Los Angeles Times, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and Director of the Gender and Conflict program at the International Crisis Group, where her work examined how global first ladies influence policy. A Pulitzer finalist, she is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and most recently, Guest House For Young Widows, which was short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Folio Rathbone Prize, and long-listed for the Orwell Prize in Political Writing. Her writing appears regularly in The London Review of Books, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.
Moaveni will be joined in conversation with Karen Tumulty, chief political correspondent for The Washington Post. She has covered national politics, Congress and the White House at the highest levels for over four decades at the country’s leading news magazines and newspapers. She previously served as associate editor and columnist at The Post, as national political correspondent for Time magazine, where she wrote or co-wrote more than three dozen cover stories, and as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, the definitive biography of the 38th First Lady. She is a native of San Antonio, and holds a bachelor of journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Harvard Business School.