The Senator and the Socialite (2006)

''Publicly glamorous and triumphant, but privately reticent and guarded,'' Blanche Kelso Bruce was a slave who in 12 short years after his emancipation became the first full-term African-American U.S. senator — though he often voted against racial equality (even supporting a KKK attorney in 1877). Lawrence Otis Graham chronicles Bruce, his smart-set wife, Josephine (their 1878 union was the first black wedding reported in The New York Times), and several generations of their scandal-embroiled progeny. Graham expertly breaks down complex historical events like Reconstruction, but The Senator and the Socialite wilts under his repetitive, often dry storytelling.