Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

Cokie Roberts's number one New York Times bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, examined the nature of women's roles throughout history and led USA Today to praise her as a "custodian of time-honored values." Her second bestseller, From This Day Forward, written with her husband, Steve Roberts, described American marriages throughout history, including the romance of John and Abigail Adams. Now Roberts returns with Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families -- and their country -- proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.

While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. Roberts brings us the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. While the men went off to war or to Congress, the women managed their businesses, raised their children, provided them with political advice, and made it possible for the men to do what they did. The behind-the-scenes influence of these women -- and their sometimes very public activities -- was intelligent and pervasive.

Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of these fascinating women, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington -- proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might never have survived.

Social history at its best, Founding Mothers unveils the drive, determination, creative insight, and passion of the other patriots, the women who raised our nation. Roberts proves beyond a doubt that like every generation of American women that has followed, the founding mothers used the unique gifts of their gender -- courage, pluck, sadness, joy, energy, grace, sensitivity, and humor -- to do what women do best, put one foot in front of the other in remarkable circumstances and carry on.

I appreciated the notes and the cast of characters including names of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the signers of the Constitution, the players in the new government, women writers of the period, and famous soldiers and statesmen during the revolutionary war, which are included in the back of the book.

Excerpts from many letters are included and are so beautifully written.Let your imagination wander as you read vivid accounts of the sacrifices made by families who wanted independence from England - the yellow fever and smallpox epidemics, the building of a military, the contributions made by exceptional women such as Abigail Adams and Martha Washington, as well as Phillis Wheatley, Mercy Otis Warren, Sarah Livingston Jay, and many others portrayed here.

Cokie writes as if she is having fun telling us so many interesting facts about the "founding families", and I had fun learning more about them and relearning early American history.
The true story of Benedict Arnold and his wife was enlightening as well as the character of Alexander Hamilton.

You will enjoy learning about influential women in this book.
Cokie has inserted some of her own remarks to lighten up the picture, and she carefully recounts the contributions of each state as they represented the new government at that time; the
conflicts with the British,the alliance with the French, as well as inevitable partisan politics.


History Comes Alive ...   July 3, 2006
Busy Mom (Ohio)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful

This is a very fascinating book and I am glad that I was able to buy it not too long ago. I remember reading the back of the book at the bookstore and thinking, "I have to have it." That first thought hasn't changed.

This book is written about women who influenced the leaders of the Revolutionary War, the first Continental Congress, the first Congress, first states and so on. These are women who have managed to keep the homefires burning, raising children and oftentimes, burying children, finding ways to keep their heads above financial debt while their husbands were away at war or at debates. These are women who have given up homes and friends to be with their husbands overseas on diplomatic missions ~~ women who published their thoughts and urged other patriots to fight in the war. These are not shy wall-flowers that other historical tomes would have you believe. These women really did back their influential husbands because they are strong women themselves.

This book covers the pre-War era, the Revolution, and the beginnings of a new country where it took men two years on how to decide to rule this brand-new country. This book was based on other biographies, letters exchanged among the women and among their husbands, and other historical tidbits that definitely made this book interesting. I know there are reviewers here who did not like Roberts' little asides and comments nor did they like her style of writing. I found it utterly fascinating and wanted to read more. It was disjointed in some places as she would wander off track for a little bit ~~ but I never had any trouble following her train of thought. It was just fascinating.

This book is a must-read for every true history reader. Not only did it contain political thoughts that these women have written or talked about ~~ it also contained customs of the times (which in some cases really haven't changed much over the years), personal thoughts of people who were actually there in the midst of the fighting and it definitely showed the Founding Fathers ~~ not as perfect men, but as human and oftentimes flawed. They become more real because Roberts took the time to make them more human and more interesting.

This book is definitely one of the top 10 for my 2006 booklist. I finished it in time to really enjoy the Fourth of July as now I understand these people a little bit better and can appreciate their fight more.

7-3-06


Through the Eyes of the Women   March 26, 2006
JAD (The Sunshine State)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful


Even if you have an argument with the observation that history is biography, certainly history comes alive through personalities engagingly presented. Seldom has this been more deftly done than by Cokie Roberts in her book "Founding Mothers." Seeing the sweep of the Revolutionary War generation through the eyes of the women who were mothers, wives and daughters of the famous and not so famous men who are more often the subject of the historian's pen makes this book a genuinely compelling read.

Here we find Martha Washington and Abigail Adams, of course, along with lesser known luminaries who offer the reader an insider's view of those tumultuous times. One enjoys reading about Peggy Shippen (Mrs. Benedict Arnold) and her role in her husband's treachery, just as much as the heroic sacrifices of some of the others profiled in this work.

In books of this kind - histories presented through the eyes of one or a group of persons - it is often the case that the personalities become subsumed in dates and facts. Or, conversely, the dates and facts get sloughed aside, causalities of the storyteller's art. Not so here. Striking a balance, Miss Roberts gives us both. She presents the facts but not "just the facts" she also presents the feelings of these women of renown.




Founding Mothers   November 8, 2006
Dana Stabenow (Alaska)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Written in contemporary prose with plenty of opinions thrown in to spice things up, this is an eye-opener of a book with lots of discoveries to be made about Abigail Adams, Martha Washinton, Mercy Warren and their contemporaries. Did you know Eli Whitney might have stolen the idea of the cotton gin from Kitty Greene, according to no less an authority than MIT? Did you know slave Elizabeth Freeman pretty much single-handedly forced Massachusets to end slavery? What's really amazing about this book is how obvious it is that while the men may have been in revolt against the British, the women were in revolt against their condition. I don't think the men had any idea that all this revolutionary dealing would start the women down the road to Seneca Falls in 1848 and the 19th Amendment in 1920.