Mary Dupont

press release: A Room of One's Own welcomes historian Mary Dupont, author of Mrs. Ambassador: The Life and Politics of Eugenie Anderson!

In Mrs. Ambassador, Eugenie Anderson's granddaughter Mary Dupont explores a political life led with certainty about what Anderson stood for as a representative of the United States and a personal life led with just as much assurance. The result: an enticing narrative about a mid-twentieth-century politician who championed democratic ideals at home and around the world. Anderson achieved historic diplomatic status when President Harry Truman appointed her the first woman ambassador for the United States with a post to Denmark in 1949. She went on to serve in Communist Bulgaria and at the United Nations. Tirelessly advocating for human rights, Anderson pushed against expectations set by society and the media and in the process demonstrated that diplomacy’s requisite skills-intelligence, poise, determination-are held by women and men alike.

Mary Dupont is a writer and photographer specializing in midwestern social and family history and photo preservation efforts. She lives along the Mississippi River bluffs near St. Paul; she and her husband have three children. Mrs. Ambassador is her first book.