From This Day Forward

After thirty years together, Cokie and Steve Roberts know something about marriage and after thirty distinguished years in journalism, they know how to write about it.In From This Day Forward, Cokie and Steve weave their personal stories of matrimony into a wider reflection on the state of marriage in American today.

Here they write with the same conversational style that catapulted Cokie's We Are Our Mother's Daughters to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. They ruminate on their early worries about their different faiths — she's Catholic, he's Jewish — and describe their wedding day at Cokie's childhood home. They discuss the struggle to balance careers and parenthood, and how they compromise when they disagree. They also tell the stories of other American marriages: that of John and Abigail Adams, and those pioneers, slaves and immigrants. They offer stories of broken marriages as well, of contemporary families living through the "divorce revolution". Taken together, these tales reveal the special nature of the wedding bond in America. Wise and funny, this book is more than an endearing chronicle of a loving marriage — it is a story of all husbands and wives, and how they support and strengthen each other.

With a narrative structure similar to We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, Cokie and Steve Roberts use personal recollections as a springboard for the discussion of larger issues such as marriage, love, and family. When Cokie and Steve Roberts got married, some "friends" said it wouldn't last-just because she's Catholic and he's Jewish. Proving the doubters wrong, they have been married for over thirty years and have a few pieces of advice. Cokie and Steve will discuss issues from their own marriage as well as open a window onto famous unions in history, as seen from their different perspectives as husband and wife. Those stories tell a tale of the particular strengths and weaknesses of marriage in America and show the foundation of marriage as one that's undergone tremendous amounts of change while remaining fundamentally the same.

New York Times Book Review

“Instructive and inspiring.”

Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. Along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, she writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers across the country by United Media. She is the author of We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, Founding Mothers, and, with her husband, From This Day Forward. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.