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, 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 (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.

Rarely can a single volume fundamentally change one’s view of a major part of the planet and its complex history, but this epic account of the hundreds of states and thousands of colorful leaders who have figured in 5,000 years of turmoil and achievement on the Indian subcontinent is that invaluable exception. Not one educated, concerned, intelligent American reader in 10,000 knows a tenth of the information packed into this zesty history. That’s a safe bet, and so is this: Despite the very occasional thin passage, when the historical record is bare or a succession of patricidal nawabs becomes repetitive, John Keay grabs the reader by the throat on virtually every page with another vivid portrait of an unforgettable warrior or thinker, luminous evocation of art or bejeweled pageantry, or charge of elephant troops across a blasted plain.

In short, India: A History is seductive storytelling that reveals unexpected worlds of information, beginning with fairly recent discoveries about the Harappans, who may have invented writing and the wheel well before any other culture, and continuing through a myriad of Hindu, Greek, Mongol, Moslem, and other rulers through the British Raj down to the creaky but functioning federalism of today’s Indian Republic. Taking his story from Himalayas to Indian Ocean, as cultures rise and fall or destroy one another all over the subcontinent, Keay brilliantly renders tangled history into lucid narrative. Still, the 39 maps keyed to his story will be of great benefit to any reader.

Perhaps India: A History is most surprising in its introduction to Western readers of numerous personalities who clearly bestrode their times like colossi, such as the great lawgiver Ashoka of the third century or the admirable sultan Ala-ud-din a thousand years later.

Throughout his lengthy but never overlong story, Keay also illuminates religious differences, political movements and the eternal push-pull between Indian nationalism and regional aspirations. India: A History is a novelistic saga that provides Westerners with millennia of new experiences.

Charles Flowers, who lives in Purdys, New York, is writing a book about the fall of the Aztec empire.

Contrary to widespread public opinion several years ago, war in Bosnia was not inevitable. But once the war began, peace, or at least an end to hostilities was not inevitable either. It took a long, arduous, complex journey from shuttle diplomacy among warring parties to the signed Dayton Peace Accords. Richard Holbrooke, the U.

S. diplomat who was both chief negotiator and the primary architect of the Accords, recounts the experience in his important new book, To End a War.

Considering the formidable obstacles Holbrooke and his colleagues had to overcome, the wonder is that any kind of viable peace was realized at all.

The negotiators dealt directly with the leaders of the countries engaged in war. Commenting on his conversations Slodan Milosevic and Alija Izetbegovic, Holbrooke writes, “They both expressed surprise at the dimensions of what they had unleashed. Yet neither man had made a serious effort to stop the war until forced to do so by the United States.” U.

S. involvement came only after Holbrooke and others on his team convinced officials at the State Department and White House, and especially at the Pentagon, that it was the right course of action. There was strong resistance from the military and the American public to send American troops there. From the beginning, too, at least some European leaders felt that the war was a European problem that should be resolved by Europeans. But after ineffective efforts by the European Union and the United Nations, it became clear, however grudgingly, that U.

S. leadership, through NATO, was needed. The largest military action in NATO history was launched, which, with many other efforts, eventually led to productive negotiations.

Holbrooke is remarkably candid. He does not hesitate to point out that some of his team’s judgments were mistaken. He also shares the thinking behind major decisions and relates the inner workings of his carefully chosen team. This extraordinary book offers us the rare opportunity to see how complex issues of contemporary foreign policy are debated, decided, and implemented. Holbrooke closes with these words: “There will be other Bosnias in our lives areas where early outside involvement can be decisive, and American leadership will be required. The world’s richest nation, one that presumes to great moral authority, cannot simply make worthy appeals to conscience and call on others to carry the burden. The world will look to Washington for more than rhetoric the next time we face a challenge to peace.” When that time comes, a careful reading of this book may be helpful in deciding on an appropriate response.

Reviewed by Roger Bishop.

At the middle of the last decade, there were 56 wars being fought around the globe. Among other devastating effects, these conflicts created at least 17 million refugees and left 26 million people homeless. Another 300 million individuals suffered because of disasters not related to war. This state of affairs, following the end of the Cold War and the proclamation of a new world order, indicates serious disarray among the community of nations. And yet, each day dedicated human beings among them international civil servants, government officials, nongovernmental workers, and a broad spectrum of volunteers continue to cope with complex and seemingly intractable problems, in efforts to alleviate suffering and advance the cause of peace.

How did these problems originate and why do they persist? William Shawcross, noted journalist and acclaimed author of such works as Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia and The Quality of Mercy, explores the often harsh realities of this world in his probing and insightful new book Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict.

Shawcross traveled to Cambodia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, and other trouble spots. Some of the trips were with Kofi Annan, when he was responsible for UN peacekeeping operations and later when he was secretary general. In his impressive overview, the author says he hopes to show in some part, how difficult, if not impossible, their decisions are, faced with the conflicting demands of politicians at home, members of the [UN] Security Council, generals on the ground and the evil which they attempt to face down. And beyond all that there is the question of whether intervention, often demanded for emotional reasons, is necessarily wise. As former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali noted, Everywhere we work, we are struggling against the culture of death. But urgent as the need may be, Shawcross demonstrates that the location and timing of a crisis, as well as the domestic political considerations of Security Council members, often determines what, if any, action is taken. He examines the case of Rwanda in 1994. Definitions were important, he says. Human rights organizations, the pope, and UN officials termed what was happening there genocide. But the leaders of the major nations consistently refused to use the word which, by treaty, would require them to prevent and punish genocide as a crime against humanity. The UN peacekeeping operation there was mandated, but never properly staffed or equipped.

As the author describes specific conditions in the various countries, he poses ethical and moral questions that must be faced. Does the UN Charter actually provide adequate defense against evil? In many ways the story of the last decade is not encouraging. . . . [T]he two warlords who had most successfully tortured their own people and the institutions of the world for the last decade, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosovic, were still in power. Nothing that the international community had been able to do . . . had succeeded in dislodging them. Shawcross believes and this may surprise some readers that the overall story of world peacekeeping is a hopeful one. The crises with which the world has had to deal since the end of the Cold War are not new. Ethnic cleansing happened on a vast scale at the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, when there was no international community to do anything about it. Now there is and, with fits and starts, this community is making progress. He is keenly aware that not everything can be achieved. But he counsels that intervention must be consistent; it must be followed through. Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

The eyes have it Mother’s birthday? Nephew’s graduation? Second cousin twice removed’s wedding? If you need help selecting a gift for any occasion, you’ve come to the right place. What gift is always the right color, the right size, and the right price? Why, books, of course! Do you know someone who is so trendy that when they go shopping, they think their clothes are out of style before they can get them to the cash register? Laugh and learn with Holly Brubach’s A Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Phaidon, $29.95, 071483887X). A collection of 27 essays published during the past two decades, Brubach’s writings offer insight on trends, designers, models, and photographers. There are chapters dedicated to men, shoes, visionaries, and plus-sizes. Luckily, the photographs featured were carefully selected, so some of fashion’s . . . er, more outrageous phases are kept within the text. It is a witty, educated observation that isn’t muddled into tedium or grandiosity. Brubach takes a scenic route from Paris to New York, with plenty of stops along the way.

One hundred and five years ago, a subtitle reading An Illustrated Monthly was added to the masthead of National Geographic. Since then, photographs featured in the magazine have told stories that reflect our world and the times in which we live. Beginning with those early photographs, six authors have compiled an era-by-era account of the 20th century in National Geographic Photographs: The Milestones (National Geographic Society, $50, 0792275209). Often working in rigorous or rudimentary settings, many of the photographers featured are true pioneers of photojournalism. Look on the wedding portrait of a late 19th-century Zulu couple; observe the conditions of an early 20th-century Mexican cigarette factory; visit Lappland, New York, the Arctic, and scores of other places and events that were hallmarks of the past century. Very often, photographers would return to a previous site with mixed results; progress is evident in many of these revisits, while other photographs reflect areas that remain untouched by time.

If breathtaking scenery and colorful history excites someone on your gift list, you can’t do much better than Scotland. Checkmark Books has captured the majesty and mystery of this gorgeous country in Heritage of Scotland: A Cultural History of Scotland and Its People. Author Nathaniel Harris’s enormous undertaking covers everything from Scotland’s landscape to its literary offerings. Beautiful artwork and photographs are featured alongside an abundance of information about Scottish people and their traditions. And yes, clans, kilts, and bagpipes are included, but readers will soon discover there is so much more! Visit the Highland Games, look at priceless works of art, learn the complex linguistic history of the Scottish people, observe the country’s most famous structures, many dating back to prehistoric times. Heritage of Scotland is a great item for history buffs and anyone with Scottish roots.

It’s a classic dilemma: You’re standing in the video store, thinking, What’s that movie from the 1940s, the one where John Wayne plays a naval officer and has an affair with a nurse, played by Donna Reed? This dilemma is easily resolved with VideoHound’s War Movies: Classic Conflict on Film (Visible Ink, $19.95, 1578590892). Mike Mayo has compiled and arranged over 200 war movies according to the war depicted. This guide includes many documentaries and overlooked films, like The Fighting Sullivans and Come and See. There are sidebars profiling famous actors, listings of full movie credits, and 200 photographs to peruse. Mayo provides commentary and synopsis for each film, mentioning the controversies and histories surrounding some of Hollywood’s most powerful movies. Amid trivia and quotes, Mayo is kind enough to include a See Also section for each film, for moviewatchers who are interested in other films that are similar in content, direction, or have the same stars . . . just in case your first choice has been rented out!

Annie Turner Wittenmyer? James Fortem? Myra Colby Bradwell? Although forgotten today, in their time each of these figures was influential and made important contributions to the lives of others. There are many such people some celebrated, others notorious whose stories illuminate the thinking or feeling of a group or region at a particular time, but who rarely make it into the history books.

Fortunately, Willard Sterne Randall and Nancy Nahra introduce us to these men and women in the enlightening and beautifully written collection of portraits, Forgotten Americans. Randall, best known for his splendid biographies (most recently George Washington: A Life), and Nahra, an award-winning poet, bring different perspectives and offer fascinating insights.

The authors’ canvas is wide. They introduce us to women reformers, such as Annie Wittenmyer, who, among other accomplishments, shed a life of comfort to work tirelessly in the Civil War field hospitals. Wittenmyer not only raised consciousness about patient care but led a campaign to help children orphaned by the war.

Myra Colby Bradwell, the first woman licensed to practice law in the United States, was involved in virtually every important issue of the late 19th century. She founded the Chicago Legal News, which advocated changes in the law that would correct the “official inequality” between the sexes. James Forten, a self-made businessman and inventor, was also a social activist. One of a handful of influential African Americans in the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War, he organized efforts to aid free blacks, bought freedom for many slaves, and helped finance escapes through the Underground Railroad.

Randall and Nahra also introduce us to two religious leaders, Anne Hutchinson and Charles Grandison Finney, who, in different centuries, challenged the prevailing views of their time. Among the notorious of the bunch, we find Margaret Shippen Arnold, instrumental in aiding husband Benedict’s plot to betray the United States. And we learn of the hostility, born of political differences, between William Franklin and father Benjamin.

The authors’ talent lies not only in bringing these obscure stories to light, but in their ability to convey the temper of the times. They give readers the crucial background information needed to better understand historical events within the proper context. Anyone interested in American history will want to devour this rich collection.

Reviewed by Roger Bishop.

Issac Eisler’s timely book Revenge of the Pequots takes readers deep into the heart of the questions surrounding a high-stakes topic: gaming on American Indian reservations. His book is a fascinating account of the pitfalls and promises encountered by one tiny tribe, the Pequots of Connecticut, as they struggled to build the Foxwoods Resort and Casino, the most lucrative gaming facility in America.

Eisler begins his narrative with a generous, readable account of the Pequot’s early history. A proud, fierce Eastern tribe, they were broken and relocated on uninhabitable land by English settlers. By the 1970s, only 214 acres remained of their original 2000-acre land grant, and the few surviving members of the tribe lived in poverty. Tribal leader Richard “Skip” Hayward, a central figure in the rebirth of the Pequots, hoped to revive the tribe, but his dreams were small: initially, he wanted to save the reservation by opening a Mr. Pizza. Gambling, he believed, could not exist without mob involvement. But when a newly purchased Mr. Pizza failed to draw customers and a greenhouse business was quickly buried in red ink, Hayward knew it was time to try something new. Any attempt at opening a gaming parlor in sleepy, rural Connecticut would, of course, be rife with controversy. Would high-stakes bingo dry up money raised in church and charity games? Would an increased traffic flow turn the idyllic countryside into a continuous traffic jam? These snares and more awaited the Pequots as they embarked upon their chancy venture an undertaking that brought them head-to-head with powerful opponents like Donald Trump and Steve Wynn. Author Kim Eisler skillfully recounts the work of Hayward and others as, through their efforts, the Pequots became the richest tribe of Native Americans in history. Throughout the narrative, Eisler, a former staff writer for the American Lawyer, ably untangles the most arcane and complicated court cases. Grounded in historical detail, Revenge of the Pequots is compelling reading a dramatic book that turns a controversial topic into a fascinating narrative.

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr. is a writer in Appomattox, Virginia.