Booked by HooksBookEvents: Thursday, March 11, 2010
Book: We Are Our Mothers' Daughters: Revised and Expanded Edition
Author: Cokie Roberts
Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2000
About the Author — Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. From 1996 to 2002, she and Sam Donaldson coanchored the weekly ABC interview program, This Week.
In addition to broadcasting, Roberts, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by United Media. Both are also contributing editors to USA Weekend, and together they wrote From This Day Forward, an account of their now more than forty-year marriage and other marriages in American history. The book immediately went onto the New York Times bestseller list, following a six-month run on the list by Roberts’s first book on women in American history, We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters. Roberts is also the author of the bestselling Founding Mothers, the companion volume to Ladies of Liberty. A mother of two and grandmother of six, she lives with her husband in Bethesda, Maryland.
About the Book — In this tenth-anniversary edition of We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters, renowned political commentator Cokie Roberts once again examines the nature of women’s roles through the revealing lens of her personal experience. From mother to mechanic, sister to soldier, Roberts reveals how much progress has now been made—and how much further we have to go. Updated and expanded to include a diverse new cast of women, this collection of essays offers tremendous insight into the opportunities and challenges that women encounter today.
In a series of new profiles and revealing updates, Roberts reflects upon the number of female achievers who have graced the public stage in the past decade. In addition to the illuminating and sometimes surprising history of women in a variety of fields, several chapters also introduce us to some of the fascinating women she has encountered during the course of her reporting career—including Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Laura Bush, Billie Jean King, Michelle Rhee, and Dorothy Height. Looking into the future, Roberts focuses on the question of “What next?”, exploring how several women—including herself—have begun to define themselves in the next stages of their lives. She also relates moving anecdotes about the women in her personal life, including her mother, former congresswoman Lindy Boggs.
Sensitive, straightforward, and perceptive, We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters celebrates the new diversity of choices and perspectives available to women today and affirms the bonds of sisterhood over the centuries—a vital, powerful interconnection among all women, regardless of background.