Analytical Review Of Founding Mothers By Cokie Roberts

Analytical Review on Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts
Cokie Roberts the author of the book, Founding Mothers, is a political commentator for ABC News and NPR. She is a daughter of the prominent U.S. Representatives Hale and Lindy Boggs and grew up near the U.S. Capitol. Roberts graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in political science. She had also attended two private Catholic schools prior to college named Academy of the Sacred Heart and Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart. She has been in broadcasting for forty years winning three Emmys and many other awards. She has written six New York Times bestsellers including Founding Mothers, Ladies of Liberty, and Capital Dames. Roberts also holds more than thirty honorary degrees.

The book uses many primary sources from letters and journals dispersed throughout the whole book. The New York Times review on this book by Amanda Fortini states, “She [Cokie Roberts] quotes liberally from primary source materials like diaries and letters. While her commentary … provides little insight, she creates a strong … case that without the patriotism of women on the home front, the Colonies would have lost the Revolutionary War”. I disagree with the New York Times review about the commentary because Roberts’ commentary actually aids the reading of the primary sources and adds more context. Roberts’ writing does show how important the women were and how much of the future would have happened without them is unclear. The Washington Post Book World reviewed the Cokie Roberts book as, “Roberts has uncovered hundreds of personal anecdotes and woven them together in a single, suspenseful narrative with great skill.” Roberts writing is very good at getting the feeling and desperation of the women living through the political changes and the war with

The women were tired of having to stay in the “domestic sphere” as shown at an address to graduates at the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia by Priscilla Mason where she states, “The Church, the Bar, the Senate are shut against us. Who shut them? Man; despotic man, first made us incapable of duty, and then forbid us the exercise. Let us by suitable education, qualify ourselves for these high departments.” The women knew the disadvantage the men gave them by not allowing them to be in positions of power and barely educating them. Roberts picks primary sources that show the emotion of the women who want to make a difference and still manage to despite the heavy societal pressure against