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Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. By Cokie Roberts. New York, NY: William Morrow, 2004. 359 pages. $27.99 (hardcover).
Younger readers of this journal do not remember a time when the study of history was devoted to the analysis of the lives of "dead white men." They were the makers of history, and any time devoted to the history of women or African Americans was considered at best periphery, or worse, tokenism. It wasn't until the 1970s that historians, and through them the public, began to learn the real truth about topics such as slavery, reconstruction, or the contributions women made to society despite being treated like second class citizens. The fields of African American and Women's Studies have begun to rectify this situation. History is shaped by the authors of the time, and the largely male white authors of the past emphasized the paradigms that they learned and grew up with. Over the last two generations this situation has been redressed by many new scholars who are adding to the ever growing literature about these subjects.
Journalist Cokie Roberts is one such author, and her book, Founding Mothers, is an excellent example of a work of popular...