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In collaboration with Trinity University Press, the San Antonio Book Festival proudly presents GET LIT with Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today and the author of The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty. Page will be joined in conversation by Karen Tumulty, political columnist for The Washington Post.
Barbara Pierce Bush was one of the country’s most popular and powerful figures, yet her full story has never been told…until now, with this vivid biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush, one of the most influential and under-appreciated women in American political history.
Event Details:
6:00 PM Program
7:00 PM Book signing
Ticket Price $30 (includes a copy of The Matriarch)
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
PLUS CAPPY & SUZY LAWTON
About the author: Susan Page is the award-winning Washington Bureau chief of USA Today, where she writes about politics and the White House. Susan has covered six White House administrations and ten presidential elections. She has interviewed the past nine presidents and reported from six continents and dozens of foreign countries. (She interviewed Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter after they had left the White House.) She has appeared as an analyst on the PBS NewsHour, CBS’ Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN’s State of the Union, CBS This Morning and other TV and radio programs. She lives in Washington, D.C.
About the book: THE MATRIARCH tells the riveting tale of a woman who helped define two American presidencies and an entire political era. This biography is informed by more than one hundred interviews with Bush friends and family members, hours of conversation with Mrs. Bush herself in the final six months of her life, and access to her diaries that spanned decades. THE MATRIARCH examines not only her public persona but also less well-known aspects of her remarkable life. As a girl in Rye, New York, Barbara Bush weathered criticism of her weight from her mother, barbs that left lifelong scars. As a young wife, she coped with the death of her three-year-old daughter from leukemia, a loss that changed her forever. In middle age, she grappled with depression so serious that she contemplated suicide. And as first the wife and then the mother of American presidents, she made history as the only woman to see — and advise — both her husband and son in the Oval Office.
About the moderator: Karen Tumulty is a columnist for The Washington Post. In her previous role as a national political correspondent for the newspaper, she received the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting. She joined The Post in 2010 from Time magazine, where she had held the same title. During her more than 15 years at Time, Tumulty wrote or co-wrote more than three dozen cover stories. Tumulty is a native of San Antonio, where she began her career at the now-defunct San Antonio Light. Tumulty holds a bachelor of journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
