The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon

Please join us for a conversation with Heath Hardage Lee and Gilbert Klein on the life and times of Washington’s most private First Lady. Heath Hardage Lee is an award-winning historian, biographer and curator who specializes in women’s history. Her first book, Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause (Potomac Press, 2014,) won numerous book prizes including the Colonial Dames of America Book Award. Heath’s narrative nonfiction book entitled The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home from Vietnam was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2019. The League of Wives is currently being developed as a television series. Heath’s latest book The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: Washington’s Most Private First Lady (St. Martin’s Press, 2024,), is the first commercial biography of First Lady Pat Nixon in almost 40 years and was a finalist of the Biographer’s International’s Plutarch Award and the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice award in Nonfiction. She currently consults on exhibitions for the Richard Nixon Presidential Museum and Library. Heath also writes about women’s history and politics for White House History Quarterly, and the America’s 250th initiative In Pursuit . She currently serves on the Boards of FLARE the First Ladies Association for Research and Education and BIO Biographers International Organization. Gil Klein is a career journalist and journalism educator. Starting at the Tampa Tribune, he came to Washington in 1985 to serve for 22 years with the Media General News Service, writing for 25 newspapers in the Southeast. He covered the White House, Supreme Court, Congress, political conventions and presidential campaigns and wrote hundreds of news features. He was appointed to American University’s Washington Semester Program faculty in 2010, teaching journalism to students who came from all over the world. In 2018, he helped launch a Washington journalism program for the University of Oklahoma. He was president of the National Press Club in 1994 and president of its non-profit arm, the Journalism Institute, from 2023 to 2025. He is the Club’s historian. He has written two books published by The History Press: “Trouble in Lafayette Square: Assassination, Protest and Murder at the White House,” and “Tales from the National Press Club.”