When Reno Republican Barbara Vucanovich was elected to Congress in 1982, she became the first Nevada woman ever elected to a federal office, and the first person to represent Nevada’s newly created Second Congressional District. Campaigning as a "tough grandmother," she distinguished herself during her fourteen-year service in the U.S. House of Representatives by her indefatigable efforts on behalf of her state, her commitment to the conservative ideals of her party and the needs of her constituency, and her commonsensical approach to politics and her own life.
In this engaging, richly informative memoir, Vucanovich reflects with candor and modesty on her political career and the long road that led to it - her years as mother of a growing family, businesswoman, and community and Republican Party volunteer, and her introduction to politics as the Northern Nevada manager of several of Paul Laxalt’s campaigns. Encouraged by Laxalt to run for Nevada’s new congressional seat, she became a sixty-one-year-old first-time political candidate.
Vucanovich’s lively accounts of campaigning and office-holding offer a rare insider’s view of the day-to-day realities of a political career - the excitement and exhaustion of hard-fought campaigns; the endless cross-country commutes to maintain contact with constituents; the inner workings of Congress as bills are written, debated, and voted on. Her profiles of other politicians, from Reno city leaders to Nevada state and national officeholders to her congressional colleagues to presidents of the U.S., offer valuable insight into the personalities and politics of some of the most important American political figures of the past half century. This is a book that offers any reader, of whatever political persuasion, an exceptionally vivid account of politics on both the state and national levels during a notably turbulent era.
