White House Wild Child

The fascinating historical biography of America’s most memorable first daughter, Alice Roosevelt, whose free spirit and status made her the Princess Diana and Jackie O of the early 20th century.

Perfect for readers of female-centric biographies like The Daughters of Yalta and for fans of the glitzy drama of The Gilded Age and The Crown.

“I can do one of two things, I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”—Theodore Roosevelt

During Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency—from 1901 to 1909, when Mark Twain called him the most popular man in America—his daughter Alice Roosevelt mesmerized the world with her antics and beauty.

Alice was known for carrying a gun, a copy of the Constitution, and a green snake in her purse. When her father told her she couldn’t smoke under his roof, she climbed to the top of the White House and smoked on the roof. She became the most famous woman in America—and even the world—predating Princess Diana and Jackie Kennedy as an object of public obsession.

As her celebrity grew, she continued to buck tradition, push against social norms, and pull political sway behind the curtain of privilege and access. She was known for her acerbic wit and outspoken tendencies which hypnotized both the social and political world.

Brilliantly researched and powerfully told, Shelley Fraser Mickle places the reader in the time and place of Alice and asks what would it have been like to be a strong-willed powerful woman of that day. Drawn from primary and secondary sources, Alice’s life comes into focus in this historical celebration of an extraordinary woman ahead of her time.

"With wit and fresh insight, Shelley Fraser Mickle brings vividly to life one of the most colorful figures of the 20th Century--the most glamorous, rebellious and contentious woman in the United States, and for a time the most famous." –Jonathan Alter, former editor for Newsweek, author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

"What a tale!. . .The history of the Roosevelts has been predominantly about men, now it's Alice's turn."
—Diana Williams, WABC news anchor