Amy S. Greenberg’s intriguing theme in "Lady First," her biography of Tennessee’s Sarah Childress Polk, is that the wife of President James K. Polk was a political force in the 1840s because ...

Sarah Polk was the most powerful woman in the United States in the middle of the 19th century. ... taking them away from their families and sending them to Mississippi, ...

In Amy Greenberg’s “Lady First,” Sarah Polk — the wife of President James K. Polk — emerges as a powerful strategist who wielded her status with a velvet vengeance.