In Letters to My Daughters, famed political consultant and TV personality Mary Matalin shares the moral, ethical, and occasionally comic life lessons gleaned from her mother's experiences and her own. These letters range from the spiritual to the practical, from giving life to accepting death, from civic to personal responsibility, from looking and feeling good to dealing with those pesky boys, and more.

Here's a sampling of the mother wisdom within:

• "When I tell you I understand what you're going through, it's not just because I remember what it felt like to be a teenage girl whose body is being hijacked by hormones against her will. It's because I'm a 50-something whose body is being hijacked by hormones against her will at this very moment. And if you don't believe me, just ask your father."
• "Ma had a complex philosophy of sex, which I heard almost every day from age ten. 'Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough.' Let's flash forward 40 years and allow your mother to give you a 21st-century take on boys and S-E-X: 'Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough.'...And men think that's a compliment."

Filled with a belief in the values that keep families strong, and her trademark sense of humor, Matalin's letters are the perfect companion for any mother looking for a fellow traveler on the road to raising good daughters.