In 1780, in the throes of the American Revolution, Abigail Adams wrote in a letter to her son John Quincy Adams, “These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.” In The Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts shares colorful, humorous and heart-wrenching stories of many of those great characters—the brave and patriotic women who helped to give birth to a nation.
Roberts’s book is not a detailed history of revolutionary events, but rather many short tales of women whose strength, intellect, hard work, and grace were fundamental to the new nation’s success. Women such as Abigail Adams and Martha Washington who managed farms and families while encouraging their husbands’ political and military efforts. Women who have been largely overlooked by history such as Mercy Otis Warren, American’s first female playwright and revolutionary instigator, Sally Jay, wife of John Jay and charmer of American and European society, and Kitty Greene, widow of Nathanael Greene, who helped Eli Whitney invent the cotton gin.
The Founding Mothers is a pleasurable and quick read, and is a terrific book to listen to on audiobook. Without these women managing their husbands’ businesses, tending to their families, and providing savvy political advice, America as we know it would not exist. It is gratifying to hear the previously untold stories of the women to whom Americans owe so much. - Erica Reynolds

973.3 Roberts 2004