My Name is Barbara: the personal side—and political failings—of Oregon’s first woman governor

Willamette Week:

Former Gov. Barbara Roberts’ new memoir, Up the Capitol Steps, is the most frustrating of books.

For 200 pages, it’s the revealing, tender and intimate life story of Oregon’s first female governor. But it stretches to a Dostoyevskian length of 436 pages with too many narcolepsy-inducing anecdotes about her in-laws, ex-in-laws and mingling with Portland Trail Blazers and other minor celebrities.

Yet if you can get past the minutiae, there are rewards here. Roberts may have been a Portland politician, but she was truly of Sheridan, the Yamhill County farming and timber town, where the 1953 high-school class of 37 included Barbara Hughey: honor student, oratory champ, cheerleader. Goals set, goals achieved.

Read the full article here. Discuss below.

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