Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation

“Remember the ladies”, Abigail Adams famously exhorted her husband.

Cokie Roberts did just that, in Ladies of Liberty, history that spans the time period from when Abigail Adams was First Lady to when her daughter in Law Louisa Adams took that same role. In between, covered are women as diverse as:

*Sacajawea, guide to Lewis & Clark

*Rebecca Gratz who was Jewish and did much philanthropy in Philadelphia

*Theodosia Burr, Aaron's daughter. I learned that Aaron Burr was so affected by Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women that he carried around her portrait for the rest of his life while he vowed to raise and educate Theodosia as an intellectual equal.

*Dolley Madison. I'm now convinced she probably could have been show more President in her own right, had women been able to run and cast votes. As it was, her nickname was Presidentess.

Time-wise in history, this is a follow-up to Roberts" also excellent Founding Mothers. show less

This book has all the defects and virtues of its predecessor, "Founding Mothers". Like that book, it relates the events in the United States to the events in Europe unusually well, for a book about American history. Like that book, it sometime seems scattered, and lacks the timeline and the genealogies that would make it make more sense. Like that book, it quotes from original sources in just about every paragraph. Like that book, it has the occasional descent into sniping asides. And like that book, it is definitely worth it.

Our group agreed that the gossipy tone grew wearisome. We learned a lot, but the book was plodding and took more effort to read than the previously read and much enjoyed Founding Mothers. We wanted more biographical information and less snippet-extracted-from-letters information.

Ladies of Liberty shows the history of the United States through the eyes of some the most noted women of the historic age. The book starts at the time of the death of George Washington and sweeps over six presidencies, beginning with John Adams’s election in 1797 and ending with his son’s John Quincy Adam’s election in 1825. Using the personal correspondence of the women depicted, these women’s personal sacrifices are exposed along with their contributions to the success of an expanding nation.
The First ladies are not the only women represented in this book. Even though the primary women are Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and Louisa Adams, other notable women recognized are Sacagawea, Mother Seton, and Margaret Smith.
I was a show more little apprehensive when I realized that Cokie Roberts, the author, was actually going to be doing the reading (this book was on audio.). I was extremely pleased by her delivery and the enthusiasm with which she delivered the material. My only problem were with two small pronunciations but since they were quite frequent, it was a little irritating. (Cokie Roberts cannot pronounce New Orleans or Sacagawea properly. Both have a "ya" in her pronunciations.)
Nevertheless, this was an extremely enjoyable experience. show less

Thank you, Cokie Roberts, for showcasing the women whose contributions to America's development deserve just as much note as do the men of the time. Ms Roberts writes well with her own view interjected from time to time in an informative and interesting style bringing to light heretofore little known stories of these influential women. "The Ladies of Liberty" tells us much about the intellect, deeds and ways of influence of her subjects and much also about the times and conditions of day to day life in colonial times. I do think the book was heavy on Abigail Adams, while interesting and certainly had an impact, more on the other women would have given the book more balance. None the less, a good read.

Very well researched and written. Easy and pleasant to read. I felt that the main character was Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams. Her writings, and writings about her, added fresh insights into the historical period covered, from the John Adams to the John Quincy Adams administrations.

To a certain extent, the amount of coverage of each lady correlated with the amount of written material available about/by them from which to draw. Abigail Adams has a wealth of materials. Her daughter-in-law is even more interesting, in my view.

Cokie Roberts picks up where she left off in her previous book Founding Mothers, which I did not read. Using surviving correspondence letters, she weaves biographies of the women who helped shape our nation, beginning with Abigail Adams. She provides an enormous amount of detail which gets jumbled up with her habit of jumping from discussing one woman to another without a clean transition. Roberts also jumped time periods - for example she would detail one woman's life achievements until that woman's death and then go back to the year she was discussing. This led to confusion and periods of dullness in an otherwise informative book.