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First Lady Florence Harding: Behind the Tragedy and Controversy. By Katherine A. S. Sibley. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009. xiv, 366 pp. $34.95, isbn 978-0-7006-16497.)
Florence Kling Harding has been one the most vilified first ladies in American history. But Katherine A. S. Sibley's biography, written for the University Press of Kansas's Modern First Ladies series, demonstrates that just about everything we thought we knew about this first lady is wrong. Far from the shrewish, unlikahle co-conspirator with (and alternately suspected murderer of) President Warren G. Harding, Florence Harding is portrayed by Sibley as a first lady who was very popular during her husband's administration, deeply grieved by his sudden death, and fiercely protective of his legacy.
It is for this reason that Sibley's attention to historiography is key - it was ironically Florence...