Greatest Irish Americans of the 20th Century, edited by Patricia Harty, is a terrific overview of the Irish – American experience. At one point the Irish made up 10 percent of all immigrants into the United States. In these 200 oversized pages, you find out some of the consequences of that influx. Included are labor and religious leaders, actors, writers, politicians, gangsters. Everyone is here: Michael Flatley and Grace Kelly, Margaret Bourke – White and Georgia O’Keeffe, John McEnroe and Mark McGwire. No other designation besides “fellow Irish” would corral both Dorothy Day and Andrew Greeley in the same subset.Michael Sims is fond of Irish coffee and greatly admires redheads.

e’ve come a long way, baby Women’s History Month is a good time to reflect on the journey, on the many and varied trips some wilder than others that women have taken to get us where we are today. Who were the female characters to pave the way? And what are the issues still before us? While there are as many journeys as there are individuals, there are roles that we share, roles that (like it or not) define us and connect us through history.

A month is hardly enough time to tell our tales, but at the very least, Women’s History Month gives us reason to explore a few new and interesting books.

One of the most complicated roles women play is that of wife. Marilyn Yalom examines the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage in A History of the Wife. To answer the question “what does it mean to be married at the turn of the century?” Yalom focuses on major changes in the marital status quo over time, ending with an intriguing analysis of a role that is still evolving. This book is made much more interesting by its focus on the wife, rather than the couple. What’s more, it’s an engaging, good read. Though clearly well researched, it is not filled with numbing statistics. The author spends ample time on that more contemporary aspect of marriage which can’t be quantified: love. Love, after all, “has become synonymous with marriage in the Western World.” But before we see too rosy a picture, Yalom reminds the reader that less palatable aspects of the married state still exist, even in our own society. Throughout, Yalom’s savvy and lively narration keeps the reader entertained.

The author is a distinguished cultural historian who is, by the way, married. Valuing motherhood It is said that mothers do this planet’s most critical work. If raising a child is America’s most important job, how can it simultaneously be the most undervalued? Ann Crittenden tackles this complicated issue in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued. In the introduction, Crittenden explains why she had to write this book. She describes a personal moment of truth that came a few years after she resigned from The New York Times and a few months after the birth of her child, when someone asked her, “Didn’t you used to be Ann Crittenden?” Her description of suddenly “vanishing” upon becoming a mother probably hits home for many women, but there are many more reasons why we should all read The Price of Motherhood. I found myself alternately impassioned and discouraged by what I learned from Crittenden. She describes with passion and clarity how our society pays tribute to Mom in words while in reality systematically disadvantaging her (indeed, putting her at risk). Working women may have been liberated, she argues, but mothers were not. Perhaps most importantly, Crittenden challenges the argument that women’s liberation is responsible for devaluing motherhood. And finally, she includes as her closing chapter important and reasonable means to bring about the change mothers deserve. Crittenden aims her recommendations specifically at employers, government and husbands, but this is truly recommended reading for us all.

Crittenden is an award-winning journalist and author (including a Pulitzer Prize nomination) but in my mind what really qualifies her for the accomplishment of this book is what compelled her to write it in the first place. Writing from her own experience as professional woman and mother, Crittenden’s words are accurate, heartfelt and imminently readable.

Setting sail Many women will be wives and mothers. Far fewer will adventure in a pirate ship on the high seas, in solo flights across the Atlantic or on horseback in the Arabian desert. Author David Cordingly gives us a lesser known piece of women’s history in Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women. Cordingly writes of women and the high seas in the 18th and 19th centuries, a subject about which there’s a surprising amount to tell. It is generally acknowledged that when men went to sea in the Great Age of Sail, women were left behind. In reality, however, a fair number of the fairer sex were aboard. Some openly so: wives of navy officers who mothered warship crews or wives of merchant captains who sometimes took command. The presence of others was kept secret: women disguised as men to serve their ship or country.

Even women left ashore had prominent parts to play in our seafaring history lighthouse keepers, for example, and the wives and prostitutes whose real lives in the ports-of-call are surprising in their own right. Cordingly also examines the place of women in legends and lore of the seas (figureheads, sirens, mermaids). But I found the most fascinating tales to be those of the ruthless female pirates like Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot. Cordingly is also the author of an acclaimed history of piracy and for 12 years was on staff at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. He clearly knows something of the lives of sailors; his knowledge, interest and good research are evident. He includes first person accounts from ship records and journals which makes the stories of Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women vivid and fun.

Unconventional women Women’s History Month wouldn’t be complete without paying a visit to some of history’s most memorable female characters. That’s exactly what Barbara Holland does in They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades. In this celebration of unconventional and adventurous women, Holland tells the stories of rebels such as Joan of Arc, George Sand, Mata Hari, Queen Jinga and my personal favorite, Amelia Earhart. Though most of these women are familiar, Holland’s portraits of them are carefully researched and categorized in interesting fashion. Chances are you’ll discover something new about these outlaws, grandstanders, seekers and radicals. Holland doesn’t hold out much hope that such figures will reappear anytime soon; she suggests that the 1960s saw the last of them, that “careers . . . keep women in line more effectively than policemen or repressive husbands.” But as hard as it is to imagine a modern-day Belle Starr our obstacles and environment may not be as dramatic this doesn’t have to make the Marion Joneses, the Madeleine Albrights and even the Madonnas any less inspiring. I’m willing to wager that in Women’s History Months to come, the 21st century will have contributed tales of our own female pioneers. The adventures continue.

Danica M. Jefferson is a new mom living in Baltimore.

e’ve come a long way, baby Women’s History Month is a good time to reflect on the journey, on the many and varied trips some wilder than others that women have taken to get us where we are today. Who were the female characters to pave the way? And what are the issues still before us? While there are as many journeys as there are individuals, there are roles that we share, roles that (like it or not) define us and connect us through history.

A month is hardly enough time to tell our tales, but at the very least, Women’s History Month gives us reason to explore a few new and interesting books.

One of the most complicated roles women play is that of wife. Marilyn Yalom examines the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage in A History of the Wife. To answer the question “what does it mean to be married at the turn of the century?” Yalom focuses on major changes in the marital status quo over time, ending with an intriguing analysis of a role that is still evolving. This book is made much more interesting by its focus on the wife, rather than the couple. What’s more, it’s an engaging, good read. Though clearly well researched, it is not filled with numbing statistics. The author spends ample time on that more contemporary aspect of marriage which can’t be quantified: love. Love, after all, “has become synonymous with marriage in the Western World.” But before we see too rosy a picture, Yalom reminds the reader that less palatable aspects of the married state still exist, even in our own society. Throughout, Yalom’s savvy and lively narration keeps the reader entertained.

The author is a distinguished cultural historian who is, by the way, married. Valuing motherhood It is said that mothers do this planet’s most critical work. If raising a child is America’s most important job, how can it simultaneously be the most undervalued? Ann Crittenden tackles this complicated issue in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued. In the introduction, Crittenden explains why she had to write this book. She describes a personal moment of truth that came a few years after she resigned from The New York Times and a few months after the birth of her child, when someone asked her, “Didn’t you used to be Ann Crittenden?” Her description of suddenly “vanishing” upon becoming a mother probably hits home for many women, but there are many more reasons why we should all read The Price of Motherhood. I found myself alternately impassioned and discouraged by what I learned from Crittenden. She describes with passion and clarity how our society pays tribute to Mom in words while in reality systematically disadvantaging her (indeed, putting her at risk). Working women may have been liberated, she argues, but mothers were not. Perhaps most importantly, Crittenden challenges the argument that women’s liberation is responsible for devaluing motherhood. And finally, she includes as her closing chapter important and reasonable means to bring about the change mothers deserve. Crittenden aims her recommendations specifically at employers, government and husbands, but this is truly recommended reading for us all.

Crittenden is an award-winning journalist and author (including a Pulitzer Prize nomination) but in my mind what really qualifies her for the accomplishment of this book is what compelled her to write it in the first place. Writing from her own experience as professional woman and mother, Crittenden’s words are accurate, heartfelt and imminently readable.

Setting sail Many women will be wives and mothers. Far fewer will adventure in a pirate ship on the high seas, in solo flights across the Atlantic or on horseback in the Arabian desert. Author David Cordingly gives us a lesser known piece of women’s history in Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women. Cordingly writes of women and the high seas in the 18th and 19th centuries, a subject about which there’s a surprising amount to tell. It is generally acknowledged that when men went to sea in the Great Age of Sail, women were left behind. In reality, however, a fair number of the fairer sex were aboard. Some openly so: wives of navy officers who mothered warship crews or wives of merchant captains who sometimes took command. The presence of others was kept secret: women disguised as men to serve their ship or country.

Even women left ashore had prominent parts to play in our seafaring history lighthouse keepers, for example, and the wives and prostitutes whose real lives in the ports-of-call are surprising in their own right. Cordingly also examines the place of women in legends and lore of the seas (figureheads, sirens, mermaids). But I found the most fascinating tales to be those of the ruthless female pirates like Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot. Cordingly is also the author of an acclaimed history of piracy and for 12 years was on staff at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. He clearly knows something of the lives of sailors; his knowledge, interest and good research are evident. He includes first person accounts from ship records and journals which makes the stories of Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women vivid and fun.

Unconventional women Women’s History Month wouldn’t be complete without paying a visit to some of history’s most memorable female characters. That’s exactly what Barbara Holland does in They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades. In this celebration of unconventional and adventurous women, Holland tells the stories of rebels such as Joan of Arc, George Sand, Mata Hari, Queen Jinga and my personal favorite, Amelia Earhart. Though most of these women are familiar, Holland’s portraits of them are carefully researched and categorized in interesting fashion. Chances are you’ll discover something new about these outlaws, grandstanders, seekers and radicals. Holland doesn’t hold out much hope that such figures will reappear anytime soon; she suggests that the 1960s saw the last of them, that “careers . . . keep women in line more effectively than policemen or repressive husbands.” But as hard as it is to imagine a modern-day Belle Starr our obstacles and environment may not be as dramatic this doesn’t have to make the Marion Joneses, the Madeleine Albrights and even the Madonnas any less inspiring. I’m willing to wager that in Women’s History Months to come, the 21st century will have contributed tales of our own female pioneers. The adventures continue.

Danica M. Jefferson is a new mom living in Baltimore.

We’ve come a long way, baby Women’s History Month is a good time to reflect on the journey, on the many and varied trips some wilder than others that women have taken to get us where we are today. Who were the female characters to pave the way? And what are the issues still before us? While there are as many journeys as there are individuals, there are roles that we share, roles that (like it or not) define us and connect us through history.

A month is hardly enough time to tell our tales, but at the very least, Women’s History Month gives us reason to explore a few new and interesting books.

One of the most complicated roles women play is that of wife. Marilyn Yalom examines the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage in A History of the Wife. To answer the question “what does it mean to be married at the turn of the century?” Yalom focuses on major changes in the marital status quo over time, ending with an intriguing analysis of a role that is still evolving. This book is made much more interesting by its focus on the wife, rather than the couple. What’s more, it’s an engaging, good read. Though clearly well researched, it is not filled with numbing statistics. The author spends ample time on that more contemporary aspect of marriage which can’t be quantified: love. Love, after all, “has become synonymous with marriage in the Western World.” But before we see too rosy a picture, Yalom reminds the reader that less palatable aspects of the married state still exist, even in our own society. Throughout, Yalom’s savvy and lively narration keeps the reader entertained.

The author is a distinguished cultural historian who is, by the way, married. Valuing motherhood It is said that mothers do this planet’s most critical work. If raising a child is America’s most important job, how can it simultaneously be the most undervalued? Ann Crittenden tackles this complicated issue in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued. In the introduction, Crittenden explains why she had to write this book. She describes a personal moment of truth that came a few years after she resigned from The New York Times and a few months after the birth of her child, when someone asked her, “Didn’t you used to be Ann Crittenden?” Her description of suddenly “vanishing” upon becoming a mother probably hits home for many women, but there are many more reasons why we should all read The Price of Motherhood. I found myself alternately impassioned and discouraged by what I learned from Crittenden. She describes with passion and clarity how our society pays tribute to Mom in words while in reality systematically disadvantaging her (indeed, putting her at risk). Working women may have been liberated, she argues, but mothers were not. Perhaps most importantly, Crittenden challenges the argument that women’s liberation is responsible for devaluing motherhood. And finally, she includes as her closing chapter important and reasonable means to bring about the change mothers deserve. Crittenden aims her recommendations specifically at employers, government and husbands, but this is truly recommended reading for us all.

Crittenden is an award-winning journalist and author (including a Pulitzer Prize nomination) but in my mind what really qualifies her for the accomplishment of this book is what compelled her to write it in the first place. Writing from her own experience as professional woman and mother, Crittenden’s words are accurate, heartfelt and imminently readable.

Setting sail Many women will be wives and mothers. Far fewer will adventure in a pirate ship on the high seas, in solo flights across the Atlantic or on horseback in the Arabian desert. Author David Cordingly gives us a lesser known piece of women’s history in Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women. Cordingly writes of women and the high seas in the 18th and 19th centuries, a subject about which there’s a surprising amount to tell. It is generally acknowledged that when men went to sea in the Great Age of Sail, women were left behind. In reality, however, a fair number of the fairer sex were aboard. Some openly so: wives of navy officers who mothered warship crews or wives of merchant captains who sometimes took command. The presence of others was kept secret: women disguised as men to serve their ship or country.

Even women left ashore had prominent parts to play in our seafaring history lighthouse keepers, for example, and the wives and prostitutes whose real lives in the ports-of-call are surprising in their own right. Cordingly also examines the place of women in legends and lore of the seas (figureheads, sirens, mermaids). But I found the most fascinating tales to be those of the ruthless female pirates like Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot. Cordingly is also the author of an acclaimed history of piracy and for 12 years was on staff at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. He clearly knows something of the lives of sailors; his knowledge, interest and good research are evident. He includes first person accounts from ship records and journals which makes the stories of Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women vivid and fun.

Unconventional women Women’s History Month wouldn’t be complete without paying a visit to some of history’s most memorable female characters. That’s exactly what Barbara Holland does in They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades. In this celebration of unconventional and adventurous women, Holland tells the stories of rebels such as Joan of Arc, George Sand, Mata Hari, Queen Jinga and my personal favorite, Amelia Earhart. Though most of these women are familiar, Holland’s portraits of them are carefully researched and categorized in interesting fashion. Chances are you’ll discover something new about these outlaws, grandstanders, seekers and radicals. Holland doesn’t hold out much hope that such figures will reappear anytime soon; she suggests that the 1960s saw the last of them, that “careers . . . keep women in line more effectively than policemen or repressive husbands.” But as hard as it is to imagine a modern-day Belle Starr our obstacles and environment may not be as dramatic this doesn’t have to make the Marion Joneses, the Madeleine Albrights and even the Madonnas any less inspiring. I’m willing to wager that in Women’s History Months to come, the 21st century will have contributed tales of our own female pioneers. The adventures continue.

Danica M. Jefferson is a new mom living in Baltimore.

The formidable task of marshalling the resources and experts necessary to create a multi-volume Civil War reference work probably rivals the logistical demands of that conflict’s greatest battles. Perhaps that explains why few comprehensive Civil War encyclopedias have made their way onto the scene. But now this conspicuous void has been filled. Editors David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler undertook the challenge of producing a work of encyclopedic scope, and the result is a 2,733 page Encyclopedia of the American Civil War that distinguishes itself as the most exhaustively researched resource to have come out since the Encyclopedia of the Confederacy (Simon ∧ Schuster, 1993).

At the invitation of the Heidlers, noted Civil War historians such as Gary W. Gallagher, James I. Robertson, Jr., William C. Davis and Charles P. Roland composed the encyclopedia’s 1,600 entries. Military subjects predominate, but the editors also survey political and social aspects, achieving a judicious balance of topics. Biographies compose the majority of articles; the likes of Joseph Bailey, Edouard de Stoeckl, Barbara Frietschie and countless other lesser known figures are presented in addition to all the more famous ones. Battles from Antietam to Yellow Bayou are also aptly treated. The entries reflect recent advances in scholarship and interpretation, and the editorial perspective throughout is evenhanded. As purely a reference work, the encyclopedia admirably fulfills its duty of facilitating further research on the Civil War. Cross-references that accompany each article make textual navigation easy; short bibliographies following each entry provide the reader with relevant sources. The Encyclopedia of the American Civil War is essentially functional in design. It is not a splashy picture book destined for the coffee table, but rather a research tool. Ample pictures and maps supplement the text, but there are no fancy graphics or color photos.

With a price that matches the heft of its pages, this fine set may be more affordable for libraries and academic institutions than for individuals.

Charles L. McCollum is a copy editor for the Civil War Book Review.

A year in the life of America Villains just aren’t what they used to be. Rarely do we read these days of people being assaulted to the accompaniment of such inflated locutions as this: “Now you damned, perjured rascal, we will inflict upon you the penalty of your violated obligations.” The victim was a minister and his would-be assassin a man out to settle the minister’s hash for renouncing his vows to Freemasonry. Fortunately, the minister survived the assault in 1831. His story, reported by Louis P. Masur, a professor of history at the City University of New York, in his 1831: Year of Eclipse, illustrates a couple of things about reading this history, and history in general.

The first, though lesser, is that one of the great delights of history is coming across captivating gems like this. There are many other fascinating nuggets in Masur’s admirable work.

The second, more substantive, is that opposition to Masonry was a very big deal in 19th century American politics. The Anti-Masons, Masur writes, “became the first third party in American history and invented the presidential nominating convention.” The actual threat that Masonry posed to the national life was almost if not entirely, nonexistent, but that of course was not the first or last time politicians built their careers upon a chimerical fear. This lesson is perhaps of even greater value in reading history. For a modern parallel we might imagine an Anti-Cult Party or Anti-Satan Party whipping up the masses to much ado about nothing.

The year 1831 acts as more of a vantage point than a rallying point for Masur’s study. The full eclipse of the sun that occurred on February 12 had been widely heralded, and so was not the fright that some earlier eclipses had been. Though some, like Sen. Edward Everett of Massachusetts, tried to see in it a metaphor or omen, as such it was pretty much damp squib.

But it was and is perfect for viewing the storms that were gathering over slavery, abolition, religion, tariffs, states’ rights, nullification and a host of attendant issues. It was, for example, the year of the visit of Alexis de Tocqueville, the pre-eminent observer of America, who, like many other foreigners, saw civil war as inevitable. It was the year that a more caustic English observer, Frances Trollope, left the country, liking nothing and scorning in particular the “vehement expressions of insane or hypocritical zeal” offered by itinerant preachers for which another modern parallel might be the scarifying nutcases infesting the “paid programming” recesses of television.

Our observer, Masur, has the advantage of a longer view of some of the same phenomena the 19th century observers commented upon: Nat Turner’s slave revolt, the Cherokee Trail of Tears, the battle over the Bank of the United States. Behind these and other events and issues is the question at the heart of everything: “whether the United States could survive as a nation.” In examining these matters, Masur provides the reader another incidental, though not necessarily trivial, intellectual pleasure: savoring the hypocrisies and paradoxes accompanying the acts of history’s major and minor players. Most have to do with slavery, because that was far and away the chief circumstance behind the question of the nation’s survival. For example: � Though Virginia’s white community lamented that white women had been killed in Turner’s slave revolt, they gave thanks that at least they had not been raped.

� After the revolt, some Southerners saw a need to keep control through terror, thus giving the lie to the Southern doctrine that slavery was benign and the enslaved were loyal and contented.

� Not just Southerners, but Northern newspaper editors and Northerners in general were outraged by William Lloyd Garrison’s radical abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. Their fierce opposition only boosted the newspaper’s circulation.

� South Carolinians, in particular, took a kind of sour pride in the doctrine of nullification, because it meant resistance to the power of the federal government to interfere with slavery. Not many were able to see that it also contributed to an atmosphere of lawlessness that could incite the slaves.

Finally, the bitterest hypocrisy of them all. Garrison in his livid tirades frequently vilified the U.

S. Constitution as “an agreement with hell” because it accommodated slavery. He saw what too few Americans saw but practically every foreign visitor commented on the tragic irony of slavery in a republic that espoused freedom.

Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer in Wisconsin.

Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee, was chosen by the 1864 Union Party convention (a coalition of Republicans and so-called "War Democrats" opposed to the Civil War) as Abraham Lincoln’s vice-presidential running mate because he was a Southerner and a Democrat. A steadfast defender of the Union throughout the Civil War, Johnson was placed on the ticket as an expression of national unity.

After the assassination of Lincoln, Johnson’s greatest challenge was the reconstruction of the nation. The most adamant Congressional opponents of slavery, the Radical Republicans, sought major changes in the secession states and in ways to assist the freed slaves. Johnson did not share their principles or their goals. With increasing bitterness, the president and the heavily Republican Congress fought over issue after issue. When Republicans increased their numbers in Congress after the 1866 elections, they decided to take the extreme measure of impeaching the president, for the first time in American history.

In his magnificent Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy, David O. Stewart, author of the highly acclaimed Summer of 1787, provides an extraordinary narrative that brings the many key players vividly to life while at the same time exhibiting an admirable clarity in discussing issues and events.

Although procedurally judicial, impeachment is a political action. Stewart excels in describing the often-complex strategies and machinations of the politicians on both sides as they use all legal, and even illegal, means to prevail. The author notes that definite conclusions are elusive, but the evidence indicates that corruption–bribery and patronage–may well have determined one of the critical moments in American history: Johnson was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.

At the heart of Stewart’s re-creation of the period is Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. As a lawyer before the war, Stevens represented slaves and sometimes personally bought their freedom; his home had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. Stevens’ legacy includes the 14th Amendment to the Constitution as well as Reconstruction legislation. After two failed attempts to steer presidential impeachment through the House of Representatives, Stevens was successful on a third try. Although he was the logical choice to lead opposition to the president, he was frail and in poor health. He did serve on the Impeachment Committee and co-authored Article XI, the catchall article that had more support in the Senate than the other 10 Articles of Impeachment against the president. Six weeks after Johnson was acquitted, Stevens introduced five more articles of impeachment against the chief executive.

Historians and writers have drawn very different lessons from this episode in history. In an excellent overview–in which he discusses myths about the trial and disagrees with Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy, who were more sympathetic than he is to Johnson–Stewart concludes that Johnson’s presidency can only be seen as a tragedy. Although Johnson’s personal rise from poverty to the White House is inspiring, his refusal to compromise with Congress on crucial aspects of Lincoln’s legacy was unfortunate. Lincoln was too good a politician to alienate Congress and too strong and compassionate a leader to accept violence and oppression toward the freedmen and the Southern Republicans.

Stewart’s book splendidly illuminates an important chapter in American history.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

 

Closing the gaps in women’s history Talk to young women about the women’s movement, and their eyes glaze over. That’s ancient history. Women’s equality is a given, taken for granted by today’s college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth Rosen discovered how little the younger generation knew about the topic when she stood before a classroom of college students and asked how the women’s movement had affected their lives. They couldn’t answer. The students stared in amazement as Rosen listed on the blackboard the myriad of indignities and roadblocks women had encountered before women’s liberation swept the nation in the 1960s and ’70s.

After her epiphany in the classroom, Rosen, professor of history at the University of California-Davis, decided to write a book that would document the origins and impact of the contemporary women’s movement.

The result is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (Viking, $34.95, 0670814628), a comprehensive account of the personalities and issues that dominated the drive for women’s equality. This modern movement marks the third major era of women’s rights the first two being the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 and the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s and the one having the most profound impact on the lives of women. Rosen dates the beginning of the movement from the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan was among the first to notice that the Donna Reed persona of the 1950s housewife had left many women with deep feelings of frustration and boredom. Rosen shows how the frustrations of these women led to an eventual revolt by their daughters, the young women of the 1960s who were determined not to live under the same constraints. As an activist herself, Rosen is particularly adept at capturing the passion that motivated many participants in the movement. From consciousness-raising sessions to protest marches, the new feminist culture served to energize converts and shake the establishment to its core.

Although Rosen is a noted feminist academic, with two of her previous books on the standard Women’s Studies reading list, in The World Split Open, she creates an accessible narrative account that should appeal to non-academic readers as well.

One battle cry of the feminist movement was, The personal is political. By this, women meant that politics and power structures affected the everyday occurrences of private life, from the home to the workplace. A first-rate description of how the women’s movement affected the personal lives of women can be found in Elizabeth Fishel’s Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became (Random House, $23.95, 0679449833). Spurred by her 25th high school reunion, Fishel decided to trace the paths of ten classmates after their graduation in 1968 from the Brearley School, a girls’ school favored by New York City’s wealthiest families.

Fishel gives a fascinating account of how these young women were caught in the crossfire between the old world of wealth and privilege and the new world of social upheaval and changing roles for women. Women just a half generation older were secure in their lives as housewives and mothers, while women a few years younger aimed for careers as doctors, lawyers, and psychologists. The girls of the class of ’68 were left floundering, unsure which direction to take, as a social revolt erupted around them. Fishel follows them through suicide, divorce, drugs, alcohol, career changes, and spiritual seeking. Along the way, she points out broader generational patterns and statistical tidbits, such as this one: Women born in the 1950s have had fewer children than any other generation in U.

S. history. The women of the Brearley class conformed to this trend, with many remaining childless or choosing motherhood later in life.

Fishel’s book ends on an upbeat note when the class gathers in 1998 for its 30th reunion. Despite the anguish and confusion they have endured, many of these women reach a more peaceful plane as they approach their 50th birthdays. Although few have the lived the lives they dreamed of, most have come to terms with the choices they made.

Another good reading selection for Women’s History Month is Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, 0679431063) which gives detailed and incisive portraits of 12 women writers who lived and wrote in the transitional era before the women’s movement leveled the playing field. Pierpont could have titled her book Hard-Headed Women, for if there is one quality these fiesty women writers have in common, it’s stubbornness. From Gertrude Stein to Eudora Welty, each woman stuck to the course she set, which was often outside the norm established for women of the day.

The 12 women profiled here are all what Pierpont considers literary women of influence (very different from women of literary influence). In other words, their writing changed the way people thought about race, about politics, and about sex.

Pierpont’s subjects include both the lesser known (19th century South African novelist Olive Schriner) and the wildly popular (Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell). One surprising inclusion is Mae West, who made her name as the Madonna of her era, more than willing to deny conventions of appropriate sexual behavior. It’s not nearly as well known that West was also a writer. As Pierpont notes, Mae West had to become a writer before she could be a movie star. In 1926, West wrote a three-act play titled simply, Sex, which delighted its sold-out audiences, but appalled the critics. West went on to the movies, where she often punched up her own part in the script to add sizzle.

Pierpont gives sympathetic portrayals of these often outlandish and avant-garde women, with the curious exception of Eudora Welty. This Mississippi writer earns Pierpont’s criticism for failing to condemn the racial bigotry that existed in her home state. Only once, in a short story about the assassination of Medgar Evers, did Welty express anguish over racial discrimination. For Pierpont, this studied avoidance of social reality casts a pall over Welty’s work.

And finally, for the younger woman in your life, Penny Colman has written an excellent overview of a neglected topic, Girls: A History of Growing up Female in America. Working from letters, diaries and other original sources, Colman pieces together a culturally diverse account of girls’ experiences throughout U.

S. history. Girls coming of age in the new millennium will find role models, encouragement, humor, and despair in the life stories presented here. From pioneer girls to future astronauts, each has a unique story to tell.

Closing the gaps in women’s history Talk to young women about the women’s movement, and their eyes glaze over. That’s ancient history. Women’s equality is a given, taken for granted by today’s college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth Rosen discovered how little the younger generation knew about the topic when she stood before a classroom of college students and asked how the women’s movement had affected their lives. They couldn’t answer. The students stared in amazement as Rosen listed on the blackboard the myriad of indignities and roadblocks women had encountered before women’s liberation swept the nation in the 1960s and ’70s.

After her epiphany in the classroom, Rosen, professor of history at the University of California-Davis, decided to write a book that would document the origins and impact of the contemporary women’s movement.

The result is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (Viking, $34.95, 0670814628), a comprehensive account of the personalities and issues that dominated the drive for women’s equality. This modern movement marks the third major era of women’s rights the first two being the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 and the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s and the one having the most profound impact on the lives of women. Rosen dates the beginning of the movement from the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan was among the first to notice that the Donna Reed persona of the 1950s housewife had left many women with deep feelings of frustration and boredom. Rosen shows how the frustrations of these women led to an eventual revolt by their daughters, the young women of the 1960s who were determined not to live under the same constraints. As an activist herself, Rosen is particularly adept at capturing the passion that motivated many participants in the movement. From consciousness-raising sessions to protest marches, the new feminist culture served to energize converts and shake the establishment to its core.

Although Rosen is a noted feminist academic, with two of her previous books on the standard Women’s Studies reading list, in The World Split Open, she creates an accessible narrative account that should appeal to non-academic readers as well.

One battle cry of the feminist movement was, The personal is political. By this, women meant that politics and power structures affected the everyday occurrences of private life, from the home to the workplace. A first-rate description of how the women’s movement affected the personal lives of women can be found in Elizabeth Fishel’s Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became (Random House, $23.95, 0679449833). Spurred by her 25th high school reunion, Fishel decided to trace the paths of ten classmates after their graduation in 1968 from the Brearley School, a girls’ school favored by New York City’s wealthiest families.

Fishel gives a fascinating account of how these young women were caught in the crossfire between the old world of wealth and privilege and the new world of social upheaval and changing roles for women. Women just a half generation older were secure in their lives as housewives and mothers, while women a few years younger aimed for careers as doctors, lawyers, and psychologists. The girls of the class of ’68 were left floundering, unsure which direction to take, as a social revolt erupted around them. Fishel follows them through suicide, divorce, drugs, alcohol, career changes, and spiritual seeking. Along the way, she points out broader generational patterns and statistical tidbits, such as this one: Women born in the 1950s have had fewer children than any other generation in U.

S. history. The women of the Brearley class conformed to this trend, with many remaining childless or choosing motherhood later in life.

Fishel’s book ends on an upbeat note when the class gathers in 1998 for its 30th reunion. Despite the anguish and confusion they have endured, many of these women reach a more peaceful plane as they approach their 50th birthdays. Although few have the lived the lives they dreamed of, most have come to terms with the choices they made.

Another good reading selection for Women’s History Month is Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World which gives detailed and incisive portraits of 12 women writers who lived and wrote in the transitional era before the women’s movement leveled the playing field. Pierpont could have titled her book Hard-Headed Women, for if there is one quality these fiesty women writers have in common, it’s stubbornness. From Gertrude Stein to Eudora Welty, each woman stuck to the course she set, which was often outside the norm established for women of the day.

The 12 women profiled here are all what Pierpont considers literary women of influence (very different from women of literary influence). In other words, their writing changed the way people thought about race, about politics, and about sex.

Pierpont’s subjects include both the lesser known (19th century South African novelist Olive Schriner) and the wildly popular (Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell). One surprising inclusion is Mae West, who made her name as the Madonna of her era, more than willing to deny conventions of appropriate sexual behavior. It’s not nearly as well known that West was also a writer. As Pierpont notes, Mae West had to become a writer before she could be a movie star. In 1926, West wrote a three-act play titled simply, Sex, which delighted its sold-out audiences, but appalled the critics. West went on to the movies, where she often punched up her own part in the script to add sizzle.

Pierpont gives sympathetic portrayals of these often outlandish and avant-garde women, with the curious exception of Eudora Welty. This Mississippi writer earns Pierpont’s criticism for failing to condemn the racial bigotry that existed in her home state. Only once, in a short story about the assassination of Medgar Evers, did Welty express anguish over racial discrimination. For Pierpont, this studied avoidance of social reality casts a pall over Welty’s work.

And finally, for the younger woman in your life, Penny Colman has written an excellent overview of a neglected topic, Girls: A History of Growing up Female in America (Scholastic, $18.95, 0590371290). Working from letters, diaries and other original sources, Colman pieces together a culturally diverse account of girls’ experiences throughout U.

S. history. Girls coming of age in the new millennium will find role models, encouragement, humor, and despair in the life stories presented here. From pioneer girls to future astronauts, each has a unique story to tell.

Closing the gaps in women’s history Talk to young women about the women’s movement, and their eyes glaze over. That’s ancient history. Women’s equality is a given, taken for granted by today’s college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth Rosen discovered how little the younger generation knew about the topic when she stood before a classroom of college students and asked how the women’s movement had affected their lives. They couldn’t answer. The students stared in amazement as Rosen listed on the blackboard the myriad of indignities and roadblocks women had encountered before women’s liberation swept the nation in the 1960s and ’70s.

After her epiphany in the classroom, Rosen, professor of history at the University of California-Davis, decided to write a book that would document the origins and impact of the contemporary women’s movement.

The result is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (Viking, $34.95, 0670814628), a comprehensive account of the personalities and issues that dominated the drive for women’s equality. This modern movement marks the third major era of women’s rights the first two being the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 and the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s and the one having the most profound impact on the lives of women. Rosen dates the beginning of the movement from the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan was among the first to notice that the Donna Reed persona of the 1950s housewife had left many women with deep feelings of frustration and boredom. Rosen shows how the frustrations of these women led to an eventual revolt by their daughters, the young women of the 1960s who were determined not to live under the same constraints. As an activist herself, Rosen is particularly adept at capturing the passion that motivated many participants in the movement. From consciousness-raising sessions to protest marches, the new feminist culture served to energize converts and shake the establishment to its core.

Although Rosen is a noted feminist academic, with two of her previous books on the standard Women’s Studies reading list, in The World Split Open, she creates an accessible narrative account that should appeal to non-academic readers as well.

One battle cry of the feminist movement was, The personal is political. By this, women meant that politics and power structures affected the everyday occurrences of private life, from the home to the workplace. A first-rate description of how the women’s movement affected the personal lives of women can be found in Elizabeth Fishel’s Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became. Spurred by her 25th high school reunion, Fishel decided to trace the paths of ten classmates after their graduation in 1968 from the Brearley School, a girls’ school favored by New York City’s wealthiest families.

Fishel gives a fascinating account of how these young women were caught in the crossfire between the old world of wealth and privilege and the new world of social upheaval and changing roles for women. Women just a half generation older were secure in their lives as housewives and mothers, while women a few years younger aimed for careers as doctors, lawyers, and psychologists. The girls of the class of ’68 were left floundering, unsure which direction to take, as a social revolt erupted around them. Fishel follows them through suicide, divorce, drugs, alcohol, career changes, and spiritual seeking. Along the way, she points out broader generational patterns and statistical tidbits, such as this one: Women born in the 1950s have had fewer children than any other generation in U.

S. history. The women of the Brearley class conformed to this trend, with many remaining childless or choosing motherhood later in life.

Fishel’s book ends on an upbeat note when the class gathers in 1998 for its 30th reunion. Despite the anguish and confusion they have endured, many of these women reach a more peaceful plane as they approach their 50th birthdays. Although few have the lived the lives they dreamed of, most have come to terms with the choices they made.

Another good reading selection for Women’s History Month is Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, 0679431063) which gives detailed and incisive portraits of 12 women writers who lived and wrote in the transitional era before the women’s movement leveled the playing field. Pierpont could have titled her book Hard-Headed Women, for if there is one quality these fiesty women writers have in common, it’s stubbornness. From Gertrude Stein to Eudora Welty, each woman stuck to the course she set, which was often outside the norm established for women of the day.

The 12 women profiled here are all what Pierpont considers literary women of influence (very different from women of literary influence). In other words, their writing changed the way people thought about race, about politics, and about sex.

Pierpont’s subjects include both the lesser known (19th century South African novelist Olive Schriner) and the wildly popular (Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell). One surprising inclusion is Mae West, who made her name as the Madonna of her era, more than willing to deny conventions of appropriate sexual behavior. It’s not nearly as well known that West was also a writer. As Pierpont notes, Mae West had to become a writer before she could be a movie star. In 1926, West wrote a three-act play titled simply, Sex, which delighted its sold-out audiences, but appalled the critics. West went on to the movies, where she often punched up her own part in the script to add sizzle.

Pierpont gives sympathetic portrayals of these often outlandish and avant-garde women, with the curious exception of Eudora Welty. This Mississippi writer earns Pierpont’s criticism for failing to condemn the racial bigotry that existed in her home state. Only once, in a short story about the assassination of Medgar Evers, did Welty express anguish over racial discrimination. For Pierpont, this studied avoidance of social reality casts a pall over Welty’s work.

And finally, for the younger woman in your life, Penny Colman has written an excellent overview of a neglected topic, Girls: A History of Growing up Female in America (Scholastic, $18.95, 0590371290). Working from letters, diaries and other original sources, Colman pieces together a culturally diverse account of girls’ experiences throughout U.

S. history. Girls coming of age in the new millennium will find role models, encouragement, humor, and despair in the life stories presented here. From pioneer girls to future astronauts, each has a unique story to tell.