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| Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation | 
 enlarge | Author: Cokie Roberts
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $10.59
You Save: $4.36 (29%)
New (7) Used (12) from $4.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 322835
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.3 x 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.30922
ASIN: B000P29HZM
Publication Date: March 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great premise; terrible execution July 6, 2005
21 out of 28 found this review helpful
This was our book club's selection for June, and we all had been excited by the topic and the author. I was disappointed reading it. The first chapter was the only fairly coherent one because Roberts stayed pretty much on-topic when describing Eliza Pinckney. After that, Roberts seemed to lose her way. The book is crying out for a good editor. Surely the editor should have cleaned up the ridiculously long paragraphs-one was over a page and went from person to person, back and forth through time, and I never could figure out the point. The book was so hard to read that it took me two weeks to slough through the 278 pages of the main text.
At book club meetings, we usually have a wide range of opinions on books, but this time, the vote was unanimous: It was dreadful. A few of the comments from members were: Fascinating premise; terrible rendering; what a waste of a good topic; expected better from Roberts; got published just because it was by Roberts; jumbled; rambling; jumps around with no rhyme or reason; stream-of-consciousness; flighty; poorly-written; hard-to-read; hard-to-follow; inappropriate personal comments throughout, with almost no serious analysis of the data presented.
I like buying books, but this is the first book club book that I've wished I took out of the library instead of buying.
I read all this before May 6, 2004
20 out of 36 found this review helpful
I was very disappointed in this book. If you have read Benjamin Franklin and John Adams you have already read 80% of this book.It was just a review of the dozens of books on the Revolutionary War. It barely mentioned Dolly Madison and basically stopped with Martha Washington, Abigal Adams and a little bit about Benjamin's roomate. Big disappointment.
For In Style readers who've yet to graduate to People Mag June 23, 2004
19 out of 39 found this review helpful
With Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, Cokie Roberts has provided a service to remedial readers everywhere.
Writing on what appears to be a third grade reading level (which I hope reflects a choice she made and not her own reading comprehension level), Cokie's prodded her usual readers to put down their See Spot Run picture books.
Trudging through page after page of facts from other books (usually better written ones), I kept attempting to think of another writer so committed to a grace-free style.
Used to be that a writer of Cokie's ilk would put out a book (say, Joan Rivers) and no one who read it fooled themselves into thinking it was a great book or helping the nation's literacy levels. We knew it was trash and if we read it, we didn't try to justify it after the fact by praising it as anything other than a "page turner" (high praise for these type of books).
But somewhere along the way we appear to have lost our abilities for critical thought if this repetative, plodding clip-job can be seen as anything other than a hack trying to cash in with as little work as possible. (The American dream? I don't know, we used to take pride in our work.)
I made it to page 70 (and felt I lost several reading levels in the process) before I tossed this book. Couldn't even pass it on because though I do favor recycling, I couldn't in good faith risk inflicting the cellular damage this type of dull, graceless "writing" does to one's brain.
I read the reviews of this hoping to find something I'd missed in the 70 pages I had read, some level on which to appreciate it.
I didn't find any comments like that. Some argue it's "new" information. New to them, perhaps, but that's nothing they should scream from the rooftops. (Has Jay Leno's stupid American skits made people proud of their own ignorance?) I did read a review that cautioned readers not to mistake clip-jobs for books and not to mistake magpies for authors. I applaud that sentiment. It's sound, it's reasoned, it's informed, it's educated.
But clearly there's a market for this book. I've reflected on the seventy pages read for half an hour now trying to figure out whom these people are. Then it hit me, Founding Mothers is a "book" for In Style readers who've yet to graduate to People Magazine.
 A book of fluffy "Chick" history September 15, 2004
17 out of 25 found this review helpful
Don't get me wrong...I did enjoy the book. But I found it to be more a collection of anecdotes/stories and little biographies and not really all that in depth. But Ms. Roberts never did claim the book was to be an academic analysis of womens role in the "Birth of a Nation".I think it was more a collection of tales that she found interesting. I would recommend instead Gail Collins book America's Women- 400 years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines. Cokie Roberts book did confirm for me though my opinion that if it weren't for Abigail Adams there might not be a United States!
 Wonderful Look In To The Past April 28, 2004
14 out of 20 found this review helpful
"Founding Mothers" is a wonderful look in to our past, and the beautiful women that served steps behind their mates, and yet-steps beyond their mates as well. I enjoyed the details included in this book, little pieces of "Original Thoughts" the women of our past have lent to us. Ms. Robert's does well in giving us a truly beautiful book to share with the women of the present and future.
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