Women at Work

Jennifer Steinhauer The Firsts: The Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress

In November 2018, the greatest number of women in American history entered Congress, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ​“the Squad”,  “the Badasses,” the first two Native Americans, and the first two Muslim women. All diverse in background, age, professional experience and ideology, they were swept into office on a wave of grassroots support. Jennifer Steinhauer follows their first year in the 116th Congress, probing the question: Would Washington, with its hidebound traditions, change the change-makers or would this Congress, representing today’s America, truly be the start of something new? Vivid and smart, The Firsts delivers fresh details, inside access, historical perspective, and expert analysis as these women — inspiring, controversial, talented, and rebellious — do something truly surprising: make Congress essential again.

Jennifer Steinhauer has covered high profile beats in her 25-year reporting career at The New York Times.

Marlene Trestman The Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of Bessie Margolin

Before there was a ​“Notorious RBG,” there was an ​“Audacious Bessie M.” Trestman's Fair Labor Lawyer recounts Bessie Margolin's thrilling and inspirational journey from the New Orleans Jewish Orphans Home through the New Deal to the nation's highest courts, where she defended the New Deal’s Tennessee Valley Authority, drafted the rules for American Military Tribunals for Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, and shepherded the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Margolin opened doors for women, one courtroom at a time. The book also reveals her carefully guarded and risky clandestine romances with high-profile government officials who won her heart - but never her hand in marriage.

Margolin and Trestman shared life-changing childhood experiences which prompted them to meet. Trestman is a former Special Assistant to the Maryland Attorney General. She and her husband, Henry Kahn, live in Baltimore