Books in Brief
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts (William Morrow, 359 pp., $24.95). "I've decided not to dress a whole head of cow, but [Martha Washington's] Harty Choke Pie is delicious," writes Cokie Roberts in the introduction to her strange little book about the wives and mothers of the Founding Fathers. Women, Roberts somewhat breathlessly reports, played important roles in the birth of America. They spun and sewed. They cooked a lot. They managed slaves, chose paint colors, and fretted to each other in the letters that provide much of the source material for the book--all while periodically giving more literal births than that of a nation.
Their husbands weren't the only ones with violent urges during the Revolution. When Ben Franklin failed to offer helpful decorating suggestions, Roberts suggests, his wife "Deborah was probably ready to tack the gilt [wallpaper border] around his head." When the boorish Franklin bought a practical spinning wheel for his sister's wedding, Roberts writes that she probably "wanted to kill him." John Adams warned Abigail to "fly to the woods with our children" if the situation with the British got dangerous--and "she must have wanted to throttle him," Roberts observes.
Perhaps Founding Mothers isn't meant to be much more than an echo of Abigail Adams's famous plea to her husband to "remember the ladies." Cokie Roberts's efforts may not do much for her subjects' prominence in history books, but at least we now know that Martha made a mean crab soup.
--Katherine Mangu-Ward