Best Selling Books by Cokie Roberts

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.

A celebration of National Public Radio “full of short histories from familiar names . . . [a] retrospective illustrating just how much they have given us” (Publishers Weekly). “Always put the listener first” has been NPR’s mantra since its inception in 1970, and the result is that its programming attracts tens of millions of listeners every week. This beautifully designed volume chronicles the first forty years of NPR’s storied history, featuring dozens of behind-the-scenes photos, essays, and original reporting by a who’s who of NPR staff and correspondents, and transcripts of memorable interviews. Beyond an entertaining and inspiring tribute to NPR’s remarkable history, this book is an intimate look at the news and stories that have shaped our world, from the people who were on the ground and on the air. With contributions from: Steve Inskeep * Neal Conan * Robert Siegel * Nina Totenberg * Linda Wertheimer * Scott Simon * Melissa Block * P.J. O’Rourke * David Sedaris * Sylvia Poggioli * Ira Flatow * Paula Poundstone * Daniel Schorr * and many more One of Cool Hunter’s Top Five Books of the Year

In Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts paid homage to the heroic women whose patriotism and sacrifice helped create a new nation. Now the number one New York Times bestselling author and renowned political commentator—praised in USA Today as a "custodian of time-honored values"—continues the story of early America''s influential women with Ladies of Liberty. In her "delightfully intimate and confiding" style (Publishers Weekly), Roberts presents a colorful blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women''s public roles and private responsibilities. Recounted with the insight and humor of an expert storyteller and drawing on personal correspondence, private journals, and other primary sources—many of them previously unpublished—Roberts brings to life the extraordinary accomplishments of women who laid the groundwork for a better society. Almost every quotation here is written by a woman, to a woman, or about a woman. From first ladies to freethinkers, educators to explorers, this exceptional group includes Abigail Adams, Margaret Bayard Smith, Martha Jefferson, Dolley Madison, Elizabeth Monroe, Louisa Catherine Adams, Eliza Hamilton, Theodosia Burr, Rebecca Gratz, Louisa Livingston, Rosalie Calvert, Sacajawea, and others. In a much-needed addition to the shelves of Founding Father literature, Roberts sheds new light on the generation of heroines, reformers, and visionaries who helped shape our nation, giving these ladies of liberty the recognition they so greatly deserve.

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.

After thirty years together, Cokie and Steve Roberts know something about marriage and after thirty distinguished years in journalism, they know how to write about it. In From This Day Forward, Cokie and Steve weave their personal stories of matrimony into a wider reflection on the state of marriage in America today. Here they write with the same conversational style that catapulted Cokie''s We Are Our Mother''s Daughters to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. They ruminate on their early worries about their different faiths—she''s Catholic, he''s Jewish—and describe their wedding day at Cokie''s childhood home. They discuss the struggle to balance careers and parenthood, and how they compromise when they disagree. They also tell the stories of other American marriages: that of John and Abigail Adams, and those pioneers, slaves and immigrants. They offer stories of broken marriages as well, of contemporary families living through the "divorce revolution". Taken together, these tales reveal the special nature of the wedding bond in America. Wise and funny, this book is more than an endearing chronicle of a loving marriage—it is a story of all husbands and wives, and how they support and strengthen each other.

In this engrossing and informative companion to her New York Times bestsellers Founding Mothers and Ladies of Liberty, Cokie Roberts marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War by offering a riveting look at Washington, D.C. and the experiences, influence, and contributions of its women during this momentous period of American history. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the small, social Southern town of Washington, D.C. found itself caught between warring sides in a four-year battle that would determine the future of the United States. After the declaration of secession, many fascinating Southern women left the city, leaving their friends—such as Adele Cutts Douglas and Elizabeth Blair Lee—to grapple with questions of safety and sanitation as the capital was transformed into an immense Union army camp and later a hospital. With their husbands, brothers, and fathers marching off to war, either on the battlefield or in the halls of Congress, the women of Washington joined the cause as well. And more women went to the Capital City to enlist as nurses, supply organizers, relief workers, and journalists. Many risked their lives making munitions in a highly flammable arsenal, toiled at the Treasury Department printing greenbacks to finance the war, and plied their needlework skills at The Navy Yard—once the sole province of men—to sew canvas gunpowder bags for the troops. Cokie Roberts chronicles these women''s increasing independence, their political empowerment, their indispensable role in keeping the Union unified through the war, and in helping heal it once the fighting was done. She concludes that the war not only changed Washington, it also forever changed the place of women. Sifting through newspaper articles, government records, and private letters and diaries—many never before published—Roberts brings the war-torn capital into focus through the lives of its formidable women.

Strong Voices: Fifteen American Speeches Worth Knowing is a collection of significant speeches, made both by those who held the reins of power and those who didn’t, at significant times in American history. Read the original words—sometimes abridged and sometimes in their entirety—that have shaped our cultural fabric. A Chicago Public Library Best Book! "A wide-ranging collection of speeches and a worthwhile resource for students of American history." —Booklist "A golden celebration of the multicultural voices who demand the U.S.—and the world—do better." —Kirkus "An important addition to American history collections." —School Library Journal Introductions by acclaimed writer Tonya Bolden provide historical context and critical insights to the meaning and impact of every speech. Illustrations by award-winning artist Eric Velasquez illuminate what it was really like at each moment in history. This collection includes the following: Patrick Henry, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” George Washington, Farewell Address Red Jacket, “We Never Quarrel about Religion” Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Sojourner Truth, “I Am a Woman’s Rights” Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself” Lou Gehrig, “Farewell to Baseball” Langston Hughes, “On the Blacklist All Our Lives” John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “We Choose to Go to the Moon” Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream” Fannie Lou Hamer, “I Question America” Cesar Chavez, Address to the Commonwealth Club of California, 1984 Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” Strong Voices includes a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author and celebrated journalist Cokie Roberts, as well as a timeline in the back of the book, along with letters to the reader from Tonya Bolden and Eric Velasquez. Strong Voices is a tremendous introduction to the extraordinary words spoken in history.

New York Times bestsellers Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts offer a unique, personalized vision of the traditional Passover Haggadah, combining their own family traditions with favorites from other families in a fun, intimate guide written especially for couples of mixed faiths. A fresh and informative tour through the rituals of the Pesach Seder as well as a compelling rendition of the Exodus story, Our Haggadah is the perfect book for any interfaith family celebrating Passover. Readers of the couple’s compelling account of their marriage, From This Day Forward (“Instructive and inspiring” —New York Times Book Review) as well as Cokie Roberts’ We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters and Steven V. Roberts’ My Father’s Houses, will be enthralled by this glimpse into the couple’s inclusive Passover rituals.

"Congress bumbles on. Everybody laughs at its assumed spasms of virtue, no one is deceived by any reform pretenses". Clover Adams''s political commentary in 1883 could serve as the lead of a legislative story today- that''s one reason why it''s so much fun to read her mail. ...What''s striking here is how open the political scene was to women. Historians tend to insist that women occupied no political space before suffrage, or more commonly, they ignore women altogether... But Mrs. Henry Adams quickly assumed influential womanhood in Washington. As he was leaving his post as Secretary of the Interior, the Adams''s old friend Carl Shurz brought her his report on Indian affairs, which she deemed "worth reading".

For teachers We know that the Common Core State Standards are encouraging you to reevaluate the books that you assign to your students. To help you decide which books are right for your classroom, each free ebook in this series contains a Common Core–aligned teaching guide and a sample chapter. This free teaching guide for Ladies of Liberty by Cokie Roberts is designed to help you put the new Common Core State Standards into practice. "Roberts weaves a colorful story of the trials and triumphs of the women of the post-Revolution. . . . Ladies of Liberty is not only informative but entertaining."—Denver Post Recounted with insight and humor, and drawing on personal correspondence, private journals, and other primary sources, many of them previously unpublished, here are the fascinating and inspiring true stories of first ladies and freethinkers, educators and explorers. Featuring an exceptional group of women—including Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Rebecca Gratz, Louise Livingston, Sacagawea, and others—Ladies of Liberty sheds new light on the generation of heroines, reformers, and visionaries who helped shape our nation, finally giving these extraordinary ladies the recognition they so greatly deserve.

For teachers We know that the Common Core State Standards are encouraging you to reevaluate the books that you assign to your students. To help you decide which books are right for your classroom, each free ebook in this series contains a Common Core–aligned teaching guide and a sample chapter. This free teaching guide for Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts is designed to help you put the new Common Core State Standards into practice. "Instructive and inspiring."—New York Times Book Review 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.

The excerpts featured in this free sampler come from some of our most popular nonfiction books for middle and high school classrooms—making them ideal choices to meet the new Common Core Standards for the English Language Arts. From the primary documents of The American Reader to The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind—the story of young man from an impoverished African village who built a windmill to bring life-changing electricity to his community—these books will take students across time periods and around the world. They''ll grapple with complex ideas and meet people from the past and present who will inspire them. Along the way, your students will come to understand the components of critical thinking and good writing—and why they matter.

Growing up in and around the U.S. Capitol shaped Cokie Roberts'' future as a nationally recognized congressional reporter. The daughter of prominent U.S. Representatives Hale and Lindy Boggs, who represented a New Orleans-centered district for half a century, Roberts recalled riding the old Senate subway, with its wicker seats; accompanying her father on the House Floor on the Opening Day of Congress in the late 1940s; prodding her father to speak out on the floor in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and listening to prominent dinner guests such as Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas. In this far-ranging pair of interviews, Roberts also discussed lesser-known aspects of the House, such as the Radio-TV Gallery and the executive committee that oversees journalists'' accreditation, as well as her unique position as a congressional journalist in the 1980s while her mother was a leading Member of the House. Roberts'' recollections explain how the culture of congressional bipartisanship that was forged during World War II developed into today''s sharp partisan distinctions and obligatory emphasis on fundraising and campaigning.