The Roosevelt name conjures up images of powerful Presidents and dashing men of high society. But few people know much about the extraordinary network of women that held the Roosevelt clan together through war, scandal, and disease. In The Roosevelt Women, Betty Boyd Caroli weaves together stories culled from a rich store of letters, memoirs, and interviews to chronicle nine extraordinary Roosevelt women across a century and a half of turbulent history.She examines the Roosevelt women as mothers, daughters, wives, and, beyond that, as world travelers, authors, campaigners, and...

When Betty Boyd Caroli traveled to Italy on a Fulbright in 1970, she had a purpose: to find Italians who had journeyed to America to work between 1900 and 1914 and then returned to live in Italy. Sometimes she found clubs of "repatriates," sitting under American flags and pictures of JFK. Individuals told her their stories-why they left for "bread" but returned for "family." Caroli puts these workers in context, giving statistics from both countries and citing accounts written by their contemporaries, to help us understand the price paid by these "birds of passage."

This "smartly written...stunning" (The Boston Globe) portrait of Lady Bird as the essential strategist, fundraiser, barnstormer, and ballast for her husband Lyndon offers "a penetrating analysis...of a marriage that paired two complicated but devoted figures, a coupling that changed the face of America" (Richmond Times-Dispatch).

Marriage is the most underreported story in political life, yet it is often the key to its success. Historian Betty Boyd Caroli spent seven years exploring the archives of the LBJ Library, interviewing dozens of people, and mining...