Customer Reviews

First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book was so much fun to read. It presents some heretofore unknown insights into the lives of presidents from FDR through Clinton. It specifically focuses on the mother-son relationships and it is full of surprises. It presents a total picture of the early years of these men and how many similarities there are within their family relationships. Fascinating! George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had poor relationships with their mothers! They were exceptions to the close, favored son duos of most of the presidents in the book. A page turner. Well written. I was sorry to see it end.

As a mom to 2 sons, and also as Host of BellaOnline's Sons Channel, I have always been of the opinion that boys are shaped and molded more so by their mothers words and deeds than anyone else they come into contact with. This is never more apparent than in Bonnie Angelo's book, "First Mothers". These women, whether knowingly or unknowingly, raised their boys to achieve the highest pinnacle of leadership our country offers. The stories told in this book are poignant, reveling and speak volumes about the mother/son bond.

A must read for any mom of boys!

This is a rich topic, the influence of mothers upon famous men, but the author presents her material with all the depth of those admiring biographies of famous women written for junior high school girls. The reader is jerked back and forth in time while the author hops from one topic to the next while discussing presidential "first mothers" in a superficial and breathless style. There are a few moments of candor that make these mothers more than cardboard saints,(Eleanor Roosevelt comes in for quite a bit of criticism for her lack of mothering skills), but these moments are few and far between. When the author does permit some clouds of disapproval to darken her sunny skies, her criticisms are quickly balanced by elaborate, and rather strained, excuses for the woman's behavior. (Angelo's depiction of Mr. Clinton's mother could have been written by a rabid Clinton apologist.) Three stars because of the interesting topic although it only deserves two for execution.

This book gives many interesting details about the ancestry and the childhoods of presidents from FDR to Clinton. I was fascinated at how many of our recent presidents went through periods of real poverty during their childhoods.

You really don't get too much information about the mothers though. It's mostly inferred from the situations and minor passing comments made by those who knew these women. The pictures are pretty few and small, so you don't always even get a good feeling of how these women looked.

Also, as another reviewer remarked, it is kind of frustrating and confusing the way each chapter jumps back and forth in time.

Bonnie Angelo was my roommate on a White House Press trip for Mrs. Johnson's New England beautification projects during the six-day Middle East war in June, 1967. It was a time when our editors were, particularly, disinterested in flower and covered bridge stories. However, Bonnie worked hard and resourcefully, earning my respect for her abilities and sunny disposition.

It was my first year with the N.Y. Daily News Washington bureau. She was a star of TIME, a tiny dynamo often chosen when an able White House "pool reporter" was needed for an elegant event, one where reporters were barely tolerated. That December she was stationed -- for Lynda Byrd Johnson's marriage to Charles Robb -- behind a white panel specially erected to match the East Room wall with holes for her to peek through. Bonnie curled up in her "spy hole" facing the bride and groom, taking notes through the service, hidden from the V.I.P. guests. Then she came down to the pressroom to tell other reporters all about it.

During her years covering Washington she heard so many presidents mention the influence of their mothers -- not their fathers -- on their lives that she decided to go back, wherever possible and get the stories first hand. She spent two years interviewing presidents and hundreds of surviving friends and family members. First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents benefits from the friendly contacts she made over twenty-five years here and from her eye for the human story behind the pomp and circumstance.

Washington used to be a place where a man left his past behind when he made it here, and newspapers ignored present scandals unless they occurred publicly -- in the street frightening the horses -- as the saying went. First Mothers is a new look at presidential families behind all those brave smiles. It is candid about the difficulties these strong women overcame -- or created.

Sara Roosevelt came from a wealthy family, built a six-story New York city townhouse for her only son, Franklin, and his young wife and one for herself next to it with connecting doors. Ida Eisenhower made a home for a family of seven in an 818 square foot, one-story, frame house in Abilene, Kansas. Mothers coped with their lives when there was no popular mood-altering drug for a woman with a husband whose business had failed or whose child died.

Hannah Nixon lost two sons to tuberculosis. One went quickly as a small boy, and another ailed from his late teens for several years, nursed by his mother until he died in his twenties. Before antibiotics, treatment was a dry climate and rest, which everyone knew would just delay death. However, pasteurization of milk could prevent the spread of the disease. Hannah's husband, a man with a hot temper, didn't believe in pasteurization and had refused to have the family cow tested for tuberculosis.

First Mothers is full of such character-building and president-making anecdotes. These women are really admirable when contrasted with how much better off women in America are today. With entrenched resistance to what contraceptive methods there were, the only sure method of birth control was abstinence. Perhaps some of these families wouldn't have been so large or the husbands so cranky, abusive or alcoholic if their wives had the benefits of modern medicine available.

This book covers the early lives of all Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt. It purports to focus on the Presidents' mothers.

Some of the information is interesting, but the author, whose writing leaves much to be desired, digresses too often into innuendoes, opinions, and unrelated comments. Thus, the book is overly long and overly opinionated. Obviously the author couldn't have witnessed these early lives. She therefore bases this book on a few interviews and many suppositions. She gives the impression in many instances that she is just filling white space.

FDR was an incurable mama's boy? Truman's mom was an independent upstart with vision ahead of her time? Who knew?? What attracted me to this book was its tremendous amount of well-researched, detailed historic information that I've not seen published anywhere else. So many books have been written about past leaders, but so little has been written about the women who influenced these men so greatly during their formative years. It really gives a whole new perspective on how our former Presidents developed their value systems and their way of thinking that ultimately led them to success.

Bonnie Angelo has a brilliant concept for a book and enough material for about one-third of her pages. The text is padded with cliches; cliched images; unattributed quotes; guessed-at thoughts, reflections and reactions; gratuitous comments and asides; contrived conclusions; uncertain focuses - now the mother, now the son, now the wife, now the wife's family. Bonnie apparently dropped her notes when she was beginning her writing and she never sorted them again. There is no order to her scrambled text.
For all the fact that an editor was needed badly, this book offers some wonderfully diverting material and introductions to a neglected aspect of American history and to some notable life stories. The chapter on Sara Delano Roosevelt may be worth the modest paperback price of admission.

Imagine if the public throughout history had been privileged to read books and concepts like this one. We might have had entirely different Presidents than we had, or we might have had a much better understanding of the kind of President we were getting. Barbara Bush has been around for some time, and most know both her influence, and her ability to put people at ease with her common sense and her style. We've yet to hear anything about the mothers of the current candidates in 2004, but who would not remember Lillian Carter, feisty as she was, a no nonsense strict disciplinarian if my memory serves me correctly, but endearing, and honored by her son, the President. One of the most powerful mothers of all was Bill Clinton's mother, and when I read her story I wept, not only for her, but for her family, and in part, for me, and for all of the women I'd known who had to march forward in life in less than ideal circumstances. Hers were pretty bad, but they sounded more familiar than not, unfortunately, as I'm sure they did to many others. I had never read a more powerful personal reflection and about such deeply troubling topics. Their familiarity continues to move me whenever I think about it. With all of our rhetoric about how we claim to be opposed to domestic violence, physical, emotional and verbal, we've done little to the vast need that actually exists. She may have been the first that I'm aware of in my lifetime to be so candid, and be connected to so powerful a person as a President of the United States. Surely, that is a major step forward for America, and one hopefully not lost on American women, even if it is usually on American men. Because we prefer our heroes complete with shining armor and white horse, we are not prepared for the knowledge that they had endured some of the common problems that affect so many families. The revelation was striking, and provides an extraordinary backdrop to understanding her son, the President, and perhaps a little of his administration despite their obvious gender differences. Men are often measured by their fathers as the "chips off the old block," as Dad's are inclined to view them, but in fact, most have far more affinity with their mothers to whom they have been the most intimate and honest. It is the reason that Barbara Bush can look at her son, and wonder if he would make a good President, as she did once, and why Lillian was not about to become lax with her son. The high expectations that mothers have of their sons as adults is far higher than their fathers do, and sons nearly always feel the pressure of that concern, as well as the love that accompanies it. Fathers have high expectations of their sons as youngsters, generally, to prepared them for that task, but it is usually the mothers who scrutinize and measure their progress the most intensely. Any book that attempts to define the relationship of Presidents and their sons, or even any prominent sons, and their mothers is well worth the effort and the expense for understanding how those gentlemen are able to rise to meet those expectations, and the struggles to get there. This is true family entertainment, and among the most worthwhile available for family values, and perhaps, for family progress.

This book made me understand the presidents'personalities and even made me understand myself better. DNA means more than you think. When I finished this book, I turned to the first page and started all over. Haven't done that since Angela's Ashes. I'm ordering one for every young mother on my Christmas list so perhaps she, too, can raise a president.