Award-winning reporter Scott uncovers the full breadth of Stanley Ann Dunham's inspiring and untraditional life. "To describe Dunham as a white woman from Kansas is about as illumination as describing her son as a politician who likes golf. Intentionally or not, the label obscures an extraordinary story of a girl with a boy's name who grew up in the years before the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the Vietnam war and the Pill; who married...

The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, based on archival sources. Her son's biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her son. But the records tell a very different story. Mary Ball, the daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, was orphaned very young and grew up in an atmosphere of work, frugality, and piety....