Angelo, Bonnie

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Angelo, Bonnie

PERSONAL: Born in Winston-Salem, NC. Education: North Carolina Women's College (now University of North Carolina, Greensboro), B.A., 1944.

ADDRESSES: Home—Bethesda, MD, and New York, NY. Agent—c/o William Morrow & Co., 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Former journalist with Richmond Times-Dispatch, Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, and Newsday; Time, New York, NY, correspondent in Washington, DC, 1966–77, chief of London bureau, 1978–85, chief of Eastern U.S. Regional Bureau, 1985–89, correspondent at large, beginning 1989. Co-host of Panorama (television program), for ten years. Member, board of directors, International Women's Media Foundation; member, board of visitors, University of North Carolina School of Journalism; vice president, Correspondents Fund. Lecturer at schools and other public forums, in the United States and abroad.

MEMBER: Women's National Press Club (former president).

AWARDS, HONORS: Journalism award, Paul Tobenkin Memorial Foundation, 1961; Alumni Distinguished Service Award, University of North Carolina; Courage Award, Women's Media Hall of Fame; inducted into North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame; D.H.L., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2001.

WRITINGS:

First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents, Morrow (New York, NY), 2000, with an epilogue on new First Mother Barbara Bush, HarperPerennial (New York, NY), 2001.

First Families: The Impact of the White House on Their Lives, Morrow (New York, NY), 2005.

Former columnist, Newhouse National News Service.

SIDELIGHTS: Bonnie Angelo has had a long and varied career as a journalist, having covered stories from all fifty states and some sixty foreign countries. She has covered such varied assignments as manned space shots, presidential inaugurations, and summit conferences. The first woman to be appointed bureau chief of a major city by Time magazine, Angelo also worked to end discrimination against female journalists in the United States during her time as president of the Women's National Press Club (now part of the National Press Club).

In First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents, Angelo tells the stories of several of the mothers of American presidents, writing of their tremendous influence over their sons' future careers. Beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and ending with Bill Clinton, the book profiles eleven first mothers and details how they influenced their sons as these men began a career path that led them to the presidency. A critic for Publishers Weekly dubbed First Mothers an "illuminating and irresistibly readable book." A Kirkus Reviews contributor found that while Angelo keeps "the pseudo-psychology to a minimum," she nonetheless "finds many similarities among these women," and provides "provocative glimpses" into their characters. First Mothers was revised in 2001 to include a profile of first mother Barbara Bush, former first lady and mother of President George W. Bush.

Angelo returned to the subject of presidential families for her next book, First Families: The Impact of the White House on Their Lives. She covers all of the forty-three families who had lived in the White House to date, but arranges the stories about their time in Washington thematically rather than chronologically. The result, Margaret Flanagan concluded in Booklist, is a "chatty slice of Americana [that] is chock-full of fun First Family Facts." Library Journal contributor Dale Farris praised the book's "succinct and vivid anecdotes," while a Kirkus Reviews contributor called it "a must for any political junkie's personal bookshelf."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 2005, Margaret Flanagan, review of First Families: The Impact of the White House on Their Lives, p. 1985.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2000, review of First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents, p. 1324; July 15, 2005, review of First Families, p. 771.

Library Journal, September 15, 2000, Cynthia Harrison, review of First Mothers, p. 96; August 1, 2005, Dale Farris, review of First Families, p. 99.

People Weekly, October 30, 2000, Anne Moore, review of First Mothers, p. 49.

Publishers Weekly, August 28, 2000, review of First Mothers, p. 64.