"Behind every successful man, they say, is a woman. And in the case of U.S. Presidents, the women who shaped their characters to the greatest degree were their mothers. Now, First mothers tells the stories of the women - Sara Delano Roosevelt, Martha Truman, Ida Eisenhower, Rose Kennedy, Rebekah Baines Johnson, Hannah Milhous Nixon, Dorothy Ford, Lillian Carter, Nelle Reagan, Dorothy Bush, and Virginia Kelley - who raised the American presidents of our times. Bonnie Angelo creates much more than a faded daguerreotype in the family album, offering enthralling personal anecdotes that leap right off the page. She captures the daily lives, thoughts, and feelings of these remarkable women, and the relationships between them and their sons (and their daughters-in-law as well). Drawing on unprecedented interviews with living relatives, this is a richly textured, in-depth look at the special mother-son bonds that nurtured the last 11 American presidents to the pinnacle of power."--Publisher description.