Art’s ability to entertain is readily acknowledged, but its motivational and inspirational qualities aren’t always recognized. Those aspects are celebrated in award-winning author and historian Raymond Arsenault’s outstanding new book The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America.

This volume shows how reaction and response to one concert, Anderson’s historic Easter Sunday performance at the Lincoln Memorial 70 years ago, energized the movement against racism and injustice. Long before that, Anderson had spent the professional equivalent of a lifetime breaking barriers and shattering stereotypes. Though not the first black vocalist operating in the classical/operatic arena, Anderson’s thundering, spectacular contralto won praise from Europe’s toughest critics and finest conductors. Arsenault shows how she took techniques mastered in the black church to a different musical setting, proving equally masterful with opera and spirituals.

But Anderson’s amazing 1939 concert is Arsenault’s primary focus here. The Daughters of the American Revolution was then among the nation’s foremost political and social organizations and its leaders had previously opposed Anderson’s appearance at Constitution Hall because she was black. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the group in protest and convinced Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to let Anderson perform at the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson’s singing not only solidified her reputation, it electrified the 75,000 in attendance, and garnered the good will of people around the world. Arsenault equates this with subsequent milestones like Jackie Robinson’s integration of major league baseball and Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus.

Anderson achieved other firsts, like breaking the Metropolitan Opera’s color bar in the 1950s. Still, for the generations who aren’t well acquainted with her career, The Sound of Freedom provides critical perspective on her most significant achievement.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

Charlotte S. Waisman and Jill S. Tietjen's Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America is like a slideshow of American women's history. Pictures and photographs along with short captions document women who've excelled in areas of American culture, including science, politics, business, entertainment and sports. The ones we all know from history class (Pocahontas) and popular culture (Oprah Winfrey) are here. Many are lesser known but no less interesting; for example, Sister Rose Thering, who was instrumental in the Vatican's repeal of its policy of holding Jews responsible for the crucifixion. One fascinating set of photographs shows a Boston Marathon official trying to tear off K. Switzer's race number when he realizes the "K" stands for Kathrine (in 1967 Switzer became the first woman to officially enter and run in the event). With more than 900 women profiled, this book is a perfect addition to any library: public, school, college or personal.

Woman warriors

Rosalind Miles and Robin Cross quickly disabuse readers of the notion that women's participation in combat is a relatively new phenomenon in Hell Hath No Fury: True Stories of Women at War from Antiquity to Iraq. This encyclopedic collection of short, incisive essays is convincing in its portrayal of women as anything but "the gentle sex." Miles and Cross divide the book into sections, which show the various ways women have participated in war throughout the centuries. We have the rulers, such as Elizabeth I and Indira Gandhi. There are the women who have served as nurses and doctors, and there are the "recording angels," such as Christiane Amanpour and Tokyo Rose, the famous World War II-era propagandist for the Japanese. And there are those who fought in wars as men, only to be revealed as women after their deaths.

In fact, women have been as strategic, as wily and even as cruel as men when facing their opposition. One section deals with what Miles and Cross call the "ruthless opportunists, sadists, and psychopaths unleashed and empowered by war." One of the more horrible examples is Nazi concentration camp guard Hermine Braunsteiner, aka the "Stamping Mare," who literally stomped elderly prisoners to death with her steel-toed boots.

Still, this collection about the noble, the fierce and the downright evil makes it clear that though there's little record of women's military feats, it's because they have been written out of history, not because they never happened.

The long struggle

At the 30th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton summarized the efforts of women's rights activists in the 19th century: "It taxes and wearies the memory to think of the conventions we have held . . . the Legislatures we have besieged, the petitions and tracts we have circulated, the speeches, the calls, the resolutions we have penned, the never ending debates we have kept up in public and private, and yet to each and all, our theme is as fresh and absorbing as it was the day we started." Using the convention as a starting point in Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement, Sally McMillen details the struggles of the women's rights movement in the 1800s, focusing on the lives of four of its leaders: Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony.

McMillen provides an in-depth picture of the movement and the remarkable dedication of these women who faced rejection after rejection in attempting to earn women the vote, basic rights to their own money and children, and higher education. This rejection came from many quarters, from male political and religious leaders as well as most women's indifference or hostility to their cause. McMillen does not shy away from the missteps women made during the struggle. Some activists, disappointed when former slaves gained the vote before them, resorted to racist tactics in their speeches and writings. At times, personal and professional jealousies hindered the cause.

Still, what comes across most clearly is their untiring commitment to women's rights. It is both an inspiring and sad story. Inspiring because these women set the nation upon a course that finally recognized women as equals. Sad when you think of the contributions that women could have made in other fields instead of working so hard to achieve rights that should have been theirs all along.

Joe Jackson begins The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire with an old Amazonian saying: God is great but the forest is greater. He then proves this adage by telling the tale of Henry Wickham, English adventurer, amateur botanist and "biopirate" extraordinaire. In 1876, Wickham smuggled thousands of rubber-tree seeds out of Brazil. It is a story of hubris that ultimately involved Henry Ford in one of several ill-fated attempts to tame the great Amazon forests.

Henry Wickham was a failure at most things, but he was not the sort to give up. Indeed, he would have died early in his South American adventures if his nature had been anything other than indefatigable. Jackson vividly portrays the rigors of life in the tropics, where cholera, malaria, vampire bats, electric eels and a host of other plagues make life tenuous in the best of times. As he notes of the British subjects who loyally pushed the boundaries of empire, "The things one took for granted at home – clean water, a bath, no killer fish in the tub – were luxuries out here." Wickham survived, however, finally finding himself in the right place at the right time as Britain schemed to plant its own source of rubber, a natural resource vital to modern technology.

The quest to steal the founding seeds of vast rubber plantations created a gold-rush mentality in which, as Jackson describes it, "The white milk that dribbled like blood became a mirror: In rubber's slick, obsidian surface, each man saw his need." Wickham needed a way out of the putrefaction of the jungle, and this incentive produced success that earned him a knighthood, ensured Britain's dominance and plunged Brazil into economic disaster. And as with most grand actions, the consequences echoed down through the decades, creating a litany of failed efforts to harness the wealth of the jungle, efforts that continue today in the great forests of the world.

Chris Scott writes from the temperate climate of Nashville.

In the widely praised Lincoln's Virtues, historian William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's moral choices during his ascension to power. Miller's splendid new book, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, is about, as he says, "statesmanship and moral choice in the American presidency, through an examination of the most remarkable occupant of that office."

Miller notes that Lincoln received the nomination for president due solely to his "effective presentation of the moral-political argument for the Republican position." He brought two contrasting qualities to the presidency—"profound clarity and coercive action"—that Miller views as coming from the same root, "a moral indignation that saw the immense impact on human life of these decisions and events."

Among other attributes, Lincoln's life experience led him to develop "intellectual and moral self-confidence . . . and an unusual sympathy for those in distress." This meant using deft political and military strategy that, depending on the issue at hand, alienated, at least temporarily, his own supporters. It meant, for example, that he refused to accept the views or actions of such national heroes as Gen. Winfield Scott, who saw no alternative but to surrender at Fort Sumter, or Gen. John McClellan, who had repeatedly failed to act as directed. Gen. John C. Fremont's declaration of instant emancipation of slaves belonging to disloyal Missourians was problematic because Freemont failed to consider its effect on Kentucky's position on secession.

Miller strongly disagrees with those who see the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation as the only morally significant aspect of the Civil War. Rather than a power-political struggle before that, he says, Lincoln saw "an undertaking with vast and universal moral significance—showing that free, popular, constitutional government could maintain itself, a project that, as Lincoln said, goes down about as deep as anything." This rich and rewarding book should be enjoyed by all those interested in Lincoln or the presidency in general.