In 1942 Alice Allison Dunnigan, a sharecropper s daughter from Kentucky, made her way to the nation s capital and a career in journalism that eventually led her to the White House. With Alone atop the Hill, Carol McCabe Booker has condensed Dunnigan s 1974 self-published autobiography to appeal to a general audience and has added scholarly annotations that provide historical context. Dunnigan s dynamic story reveals her importance to the fields of journalism, women s history, and the civil rights movement and creates a compelling portrait of a groundbreaking American.

Dunnigan...