Customer Reviews

Sarah Childress Polk: A Biography of the Remarkable First Lady

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3 star:		(2)
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This book is a little disappointing. It is rather short and the writing style is somewhat dry. While the author's effort to bring Sarah Polk to the attention of a wider audience is admirable, it falls short. In a book dedicated to Sarah Childress Polk, there is relatively little information about her in it. In the book she is almost completely defined through her husband. Because the author is a medical doctor, he spends a considerable amount of time speculating about various diseases rather than talking about the woman herself. I was looking for a book that would give me some insight into a woman who seemed interesting, but I came away disappointed. I give this book three stars, however, because it is one of the only books I could find about her.

I read this book with a dual purpose - one: I was researching for my Master's research project on First Ladies and politics and two: I'm trying to read a non-fiction on each President and First Lady. This book only somewhat met my expectations.

It should be noted that the author of the book is a M.D. His previous books were related to the health of the Presidents and he originally intended this book to be about the health of President James K. Polk, however he states he found Sarah Polk more interesting. I have no problems with him being a doctor - however a lot of time was spent on medical conditions on the Polks as well as the general populace - to the point that it became distracting. Nowhere in the book description is the medical focus alluded to.

While there was great information provided about Sarah Polk - who is little written about - I felt like less time was spent on her than on her husband, or various friends and cohorts, and the above mentioned medical diagnoses. For someone who really was a remarkable First Lady you don't come away from the book feeling that.

Also, this book could have certainly benefited from better editing - and I'm not talking about spelling and grammar. The information really needed some fleshing out - it felt barebones in many places and could have benefited from better transitions between paragraphs and thoughts. There is one section that comes to mind where within three paragraphs we jumped from James Polk becoming Speaker of the House, to the issue of owning slaves, to letters from family (about various subjects not in previous paragraphs), and then back to the main thread. It was very choppy and certainly drew my attention away from the main topic.

As I said previously - there is not a lot currently out there still in print about Sarah Childress Polk - this was the only one I could get my hands on even through the state library system. With those constraints, this book does provide great information if you can wade through the obstacles. If you were to only use this as a reference tool and pull information from it, it would probably be fine - however as a read it is certainly lacking.