Liza Mundy

Washington Post writer Liza Mundy paints a revealing and intimate portrait of the most dynamic couple in politics today: Michelle, the highly organized, sometimes intimidating, list-making pragmatist; and Barack, the introspective political charmer who shoots for the stars. Michelle's story carries all the achievements and lingering pain of the post-civil rights era. She grew up on the south side of Chicago, in a neighborhood rocked by white flight....

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.

Within a generation, more households will be supported by women than by men. In this book the author takes us to the frontier of this new economic order. She shows us why this flip is inevitable, what painful adjustments will have to be made along the way, and how both men and women will feel surprisingly liberated in the end. Couples today are debating who must assume the responsibility of primary earner and who gets the freedom of being the slow...