24 Years of House Work and the Place Is Still a Mess : My Life in Politics

The renowned female politician shares her personal life and public career, detailing her first victorious election in 1972, how she successfully combines family and politics, and how she rose to the challenge of infiltrating the "guy gulag" of Congress. 100,000 first printing.

Schroeder has written a wickedly funny yet meaningful memoir, a page-turner that the late Erma Bombeck might have penned had she served in the House of Representatives....

On the first page of this book, former 12-term congresswoman Schroeder declares: "If you want dirt, buy a tabloid." You may not get much dirt here, but you will get clear, concise?sometimes funny?portraits of many of America's most famous politicians. Schroeder, who is now president of the Association of American Publishers, recalls being elected to Congress as a Democrat from Denver during the disastrous 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign. She found that she had to deal with Congress as a vast college dorm, with congressmen unsure of women and not very interested in learning about them. She tells of her travails there, but clearly the heart and soul of this book is her descriptions of other politicians: Richard Nixon, who wore makeup all the time ("I had an incredible urge to wash his face"); actor John Wayne, who offered her a cigarette lighter engraved with the inscription: "Fuck communism?John Wayne" (she declined the gift); and Phyllis Schlafly (who "always looked like she came out of a Talbots catalogue from 1952"). Schroeder also tells how she came up with the devastating description of Ronald Reagan as the "Teflon president" while scrambling eggs in a teflon frying pan; her opinion of the Bush-Quayle team ("What the two had in common was their trust funds?what I call the lucky sperm club"); and reminisces about her disastrous though unintentionally hilarious speech before the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, a gay and lesbian group ("For years, I've felt like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike"). On a more serious note she recalls meeting her husband while they were students at Harvard Law School, the birth of her two children and the death of twins during childbirth. She reaffirms her commitment to women's rights issues?the right to be Pro-Choice, the value of the Equal Rights Amendment?and advocates medical research on women's health. This book on how the Congress really works would be frightening if Schroeder's black humor didn't have you laughing so hard. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An enjoyable yet surprisingly lightweight autobiography by the longest-serving woman in congressional history. Schroeder entered the House of Representatives when Nixon was president (1972) and left when Clinton was in office (1996). She has thus witnessed, and often been one of the shapers of, a remarkable period in American and world history. A villain to conservatives and a hero to liberals, she became one of the most powerful and recognizable politicians in the country. Yet in the early years she was very much a ``girl'' trying to join a Congress that was (and to a degree still is) a ``boys'' club. Assigned to the powerful House Armed Services Committee in her first term (the only woman), she nevertheless had to literally share a chair with Ron Dellums (the only African-American on the committee). Despite such indignities, Schroeder became a strong voice in Congress for the rights and needs of women. She struggled for, and often won, important legislation concerning such issues as women's health, women in the military, and teenage pregnancy. Here, though, she devotes little time to the details of such struggles. Instead, there is a breezy (and often funny) focus on personalities: a page each for her fellow congresswomen in her first term, a page for Nixon, with glimpses of Carter, Tip O'Neill, and many others along the way. Her famous cutting wit is here; sitting next to Nancy Reagan at a luncheon she considered asking, ``How are the kids?'' Wit, however, does not substitute for substance, and thats what is missing here. Reading this, one suspects that Schroeder, now president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, is reluctant to tell tales out of school until she has decided that her political career is truly over. (b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.