By Cokie Roberts.  ISBN 978-0-06-078234-4.   Copyright 2008.  Hardcover with 481 pages including notes and index.  

A colorful blend of biographical portraits and behind the scenes vignettes chronicling women’s public roles and private responsibilities.  Recounted with the insight and humor of an expert storyteller and drawing on personal correspondence, private journals, and other primary sources, many of them previously unpublished, the author brings to life the extraordinary accomplishments of women who laid the groundwork for a better society.  From first ladies to freethinkers, educators to explorers, the subjects include Abigail Adams, Margaret Bayard Smith, Martha Jefferson, Dolley Madison, Elizabeth Monroe, Louisa Catherine Adams, Eliza Hamilton, Theodosia Burr, Rebecca Gratz, Louisa Livingston, Rosalie Calvert and Sacajawea.