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Betty Ford: A Selected Bibliography

The list below describes a selection of published books, articles, and other media containing information about Mrs. Ford’s life and her role as First Lady.  For more details about published sources regarding Mrs. Ford, or relevant issues and events, contact the Ford Library.


  • Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. First Ladies:  The Saga of the Presidents' Wives and their Power, 1961-1990. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991.
  • Black, Allida M. The First Ladies of the United States of America. Washington, DC: The White House Historical Association, 2013.
  • Borrelli, Mary Anne. "Competing Conceptions of the First Ladyship:  Public Responses to Betty Ford's 60 Minutes Interview." Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 31, no.4, 397-414, 2001.
  • Brower, Kate Andersen. First women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies. New York: Harper Books, 2016.
  • Caroli, Betty Boyd. First Ladies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  • Carter, Rosalyn. First Lady from Plains. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
  • Ford, Betty. Glad Awakening. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987.  [Memoir concerning Mrs. Ford’s recovery from substance abuse and the founding of the Betty Ford Center.]
  • _____.  Healing and Hope.  New York: Putnam’s Sons, 2003.  [Betty Ford weaves her own commentary around the first-person narratives of six women treated at the Betty Ford Center.]
  • _____. The Times of My Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.  [Autobiography  of her life concluding with her admittance to Long Beach Naval Hospital.]
  • Greene, John Robert. Betty Ford:  Candor and Courage in the White House. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
  • Gutin, Myra. The President's Partner:  The First Lady in the Twentieth Century. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.
  • Gutin, Myra G. and Leesa E. Tobin.  “‘You've Come a Long Way, Mr. President’: Betty Ford as First Lady” in Gerald R. Ford and the Politics of Post-Watergate America edited by Bernard J. Firestone, and Alexej Ugrinsky. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.
  • Hummer, Jill Abraham. First ladies and American women: In Politics and at Home. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2017.
  • Knopf-Newman, Marcy Jane. Beyond Slash, Burn, and Poison:  Transforming Breast Cancer Stories into Action. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
  • McCubbin, Lisa. Betty Ford: First Lady, Women's Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer. New York: Gallery Books, 2018. [Foreword by Susan Ford Bales.]

  • Phillips, Victoria. Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

  • Rohrer, Karen M. “’If There Was Anything You Forgot to Ask…’:The Papers of Betty Ford.” Prologue: Journal of the National Archives, vol. 19, no. 2, 143-153, 1987.
  • Rosebush, James. First Lady, Public Wife. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1987.
  • Rudd, Lisa Marie. For Women and Themselves: Lou Hoover, Betty Ford and the Women's Movement of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. PhD. The University of Maine, 2015.
  • Tobin, Leesa. “Betty Ford as First Lady: A Woman for Women.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4, 761-767, 1990.
  • Troy, Gil. Affairs of State: The Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II. New York: The Free Press, 1997.
  • Weidenfeld, Sheila Rabb. First Lady's Lady: With the Fords at the White House. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979.

Biography of Betty Ford

Betty Ford Timeline

Last Updated: 2020