To be sure, Mary Todd Lincoln was, by all accounts, a bad fit for the role of First Lady. She was rude, had lavish taste and spent lots of money, which played especially poorly as the Civil War raged on. And she seems to have been genuinely afflicted with mental illness, too. After the president’sassassination, her critics piled on. That’s where Romano says the attacks on Mary Todd’s character don’t reflect the person she really was. In a new book, Romano searches for the reality of Mary Todd Lincoln’s life. She’s joining us to talk about the woman she calls “the first modern First Lady.”
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Lois Romano | She’s a political journalist whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post and POLITICO. Her book is called “An Inconvenient Widow: The Torment, Trial, and Triumph of Mary Toddy Lincoln.”
Airdate: Aug. 12, 2026