Her father was one of the most powerful men in the world. When Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901, his seventeen-year-old daughter Alice had already made a decision: she would not be the quiet, decorative First Daughter that Washington expected.v While other young women of her era took careful tea and practiced propriety, Alice climbed onto the White House roof to smoke cigarettes. She tucked a pet garter snake named "Emily Spinach" into her handbag and brought it to formal diplomatic receptions — just to watch people react. She drove her own automobile through Washington at reckless speeds, daring police officers to ticket the President's daughter. They never did. Her father, Teddy Roosevelt — the man who charged San Juan Hill and built the Panama Canal — eventually threw up his hands and admitted to the world: "I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both." When she joined a diplomatic tour of Asia at eighteen, Alice jumped fully clothed into a ship's swimming pool on a dare, smoked on deck with foreign dignitaries, and flirted outrageously with a congressman named Nicholas Longworth. The press back home couldn't get enough. "Princess Alice" dominated newspaper front pages from New York to London. She wore a signature shade of blue-gray that Washington society named "Alice Blue" — it inspired a popular song. She said exactly what she thought about every politician in the capital, delivering one-line verdicts that could end careers or make reputations. She called one presidential candidate "the barefoot boy from Wall Street." She said another looked like "the little man on the wedding cake." When asked about Calvin Coolidge's death, she paused thoughtfully and replied: "How could they tell?" Washington roared — and feared her a little more. She married Nicholas Longworth in 1906 in a White House wedding