Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons by Charlotte Gray

Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons by Charlotte Gray

A captivating dual biography of two famous women whose sons would change the course of the 20th century--by award-winning historian Charlotte Gray.

Born into upper-class America in the same year, 1854, Sara Delano (later to become the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Jennie Jerome (later to become the mother of Winston Churchill) refused to settle into predictable, sheltered lives as little-known wives to prominent men. Instead, both women concentrated much of their energies on enabling their sons to reach the epicenter of political power on two continents.

In the mid-19th century, the British Empire was at its height, France's Second Empire flourished, and the industrial vigor of the United States of America was catapulting the republic towards the Gilded Age. Sara and Jennie, raised with privilege but subject to the constraints of women's roles at the time, learned how to take control of their destinies--Sara in the prosperous Hudson Valley, and Jennie in the glittering world of Imperial London.

Yet their personalities and choices were dramatically different. A vivacious extrovert, Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill, a rising politician and scion of a noble British family. Her deft social and political maneuverings helped not only her mercurial husband but, once she was widowed, her ambitious son, Winston. By contrast, deeply conventional Sara Delano married a man as old as her father. But once widowed, she made Franklin, her only child, the focus of her existence. Thanks in large part to her financial support and to her guidance, Franklin acquired the skills he needed to become a successful politician.

Set against one hundred years of history, Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons is a study in loyalty and resilience. Gray argues that Jennie and Sara are too often presented as lesser figures in the backdrop of history rather than as two remarkable individuals who were key in shaping the characters of the sons who adored them and in preparing them for leadership on the world stage.

Impeccably researched and filled with intriguing social insights, Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons breathes new life into Sara and Jennie, offering a fascinating and fulsome portrait of how leaders are not just born but made.

CHARLOTTE GRAY is a well-known Canadian author who has written 10 critically acclaimed works of literary non-fiction. The Promise of Canada--150 Years: People and Ideas That Have Shaped Our Nation is her most recent blockbuster. Her best-selling novel The Massey Murder: A Maid, Her Master, and the Trial That Shook the Nation won the Toronto Novel Prize, the Heritage Toronto Book Award, the Canadian Writers Association Lela Common Award for Canadian History, and the Arthur Ellis Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Crime Book. The RBC Taylor Prize, the Ottawa Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Evergreen Award were all shortlisted, and the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction was longlisted. A television miniseries based on her best-selling novel Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike was shown.

Charlotte Gray, an adjunct research professor in Carleton University's history department, received the Pierre Berton Prize for excellent contribution in popularizing Canadian history. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Member of the Order of Canada.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781668031971
ISBN 10	1668031973
Titel	Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons
Autor	Charlotte Gray
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsjahr	2023-09-12
Seitenanzahl	432
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.