The definitive biography of Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American political history, written by New York Times bestselling author and USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page.
Featuring
more than 150 exclusive interviews with those who know her best—and a
series of in-depth, news-making interviews with Pelosi herself—MADAM
SPEAKER is unprecedented in the scope of its exploration of Nancy
Pelosi’s remarkable life and of her indelible impact on American
politics.
Before she was Nancy Pelosi, she was Nancy
D’Alesandro. Her father was a big-city mayor and her mother his
political organizer; when she encouraged her young daughter to become a
nun, Nancy told her mother that being a priest sounded more appealing.
She didn’t begin running for office until she was forty-six years old,
her five children mostly out of the nest. With that, she found her
calling.
Nancy Pelosi has lived on the cutting edge of the
revolution in both women’s roles and in the nation’s movement to a
fiercer and more polarized politics. She has established herself as a
crucial friend or formidable foe to U.S. presidents, a master
legislator, and an indefatigable political warrior. She took on the
Democratic establishment to become the first female Speaker of the
House, then battled rivals on the left and right to consolidate her
power. She has soared in the sharp-edged inside game of politics, though
she has struggled in the outside game—demonized by conservatives,
second-guessed by progressives, and routinely underestimated by nearly
everyone.
All of this was preparation for the most historic
challenge she would ever face, at a time she had been privately planning
her retirement. When Donald Trump was elected to the White House, Nancy
Pelosi became the Democratic counterpart best able to stand up to the
disruptive president and to get under his skin. The battle between Trump
and Pelosi, chronicled in this book with behind-the-scenes details and
revelations, stands to be the titanic political struggle of our time.
