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The 12 best biographies of 2024

List by Editors
STARRED REVIEW
December 11, 2024

The 12 best biographies of 2024

Throughout 2024, biographies consistently stole the show. From renowned authors to heads of state, game-changing activists and cultural icons, these 12 illuminating profiles delighted and inspired us.
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Ira Gershwin

By Michael Owen

Michael Owen’s thoughtful, engaging biography illuminates the life and work of Ira Gershwin.

Michael Owen’s thoughtful, engaging biography illuminates the life and work of Ira Gershwin.

The Icon and the Idealist

By Stephanie Gorton

The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.

The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.

Survival Is a Promise

By Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Audre Lorde gets her flowers in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Survival Is a Promise, a masterful, poetic biography of the literar and feminist icon.

Audre Lorde gets her flowers in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Survival Is a Promise, a masterful, poetic biography of the literar and feminist icon.

Night Flyer

By Tiya Miles

With the exquisite Night Flyer, Tiya Miles looks at Harriet Tubman from an entirely new perspective: her spirituality.

With the exquisite Night Flyer, Tiya Miles looks at Harriet Tubman from an entirely new perspective: her spirituality.

Loving Sylvia Plath

By Emily Van Duyne

Unearthed letters from Sylvia Plath may have shocked the world in 2017, but Loving Sylvia Plath shows we’ve long had all the evidence we needed to condemn her abuser, poet Ted Hughes.

Unearthed letters from Sylvia Plath may have shocked the world in 2017, but Loving Sylvia Plath shows we’ve long had all the evidence we needed to condemn her abuser, poet Ted Hughes.

Ascent to Power

By David L. Roll

Ascent to Power is a carefully crafted biography that superbly captures the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

Ascent to Power is a carefully crafted biography that superbly captures the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

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Throughout 2024, biographies consistently stole the show. From renowned authors to heads of state, game-changing activists and cultural icons, these 12 illuminating profiles delighted and inspired us.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

The Cure for Women

Review by Anna Christensen

When Charlotte Perkins Gilman published “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892, it was a resounding hit among Victorian readers. What many did not know was that the story was a fictionalized account of Gilman’s own experience with the madness-inducing “rest cure” popular among doctors at the time, used to subdue any sort of mental or emotional complaint brought to their attention by women—or by their husbands. Gilman, in the throes of postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, had undergone the treatment, which unsurprisingly offered her no relief, while in the care of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. She did eventually find relief, however—not at the hands of the male doctors who brushed off her symptoms, but with the help of one of the first eminent female physicians in America, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi.

Lydia Reeder’s monumental The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever recounts the incredible life and achievements of her subject. Somewhere between Jacobi’s adventures in wartime Paris during her medical school days, her unrelenting efforts to open the doors of first-class medical schools to women, and her dogged work for women’s suffrage, she conducted research into women’s menstrual cycles by collecting data from women themselves—the first time any doctor or scientist had done so. As demonstrated by Gilman’s case, Jacobi treated her patients by listening to them and accepting them as fellow partners in their own health.

Jacobi’s research compelled other women to follow; Reeder notes that today, 60% of practicing physicians under the age of 35 are women. Yet it is possible to draw a direct line from the now obviously absurd and cruel “cures” Victorian doctors prescribed for women and the many ways that women’s health care remains lacking 150 years later. Neuroscientists are still confronting research effected by biological determinism and gender essentialism that echo the Victorian belief that women’s abilities are limited by their biology. By restoring Jacobi’s fascinating story to the forefront of the historical imagination, Reeder returns to us a much-needed, inspiring voice that is equally suited to our current moment in time.

 

Lydia Reeder celebrates the female physician who debunked sexist Victorian-era medicine in The Cure for Women.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

The Icon and the Idealist

Review by Anne Bartlett

It’s not as if birth control methods weren’t used in the olden days. Condoms, pessaries and douches didn’t magically appear in the late 19th century. But something did change significantly at that time in the United States: The Comstock Act of 1873 effectively criminalized the distribution of contraceptive devices and information about their use. The result was several generations of vituperative battles over a practice that had previously been routine for many, though seldom discussed in public.

At the vanguard of the fight for safe, effective and accessible birth control in the early 20th century were two dedicated activists, Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett. Author Stephanie Gorton tells the story of their interconnected lives in The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America, a compelling dual biography that has striking parallels to the contemporary abortion debate.

Despite a common goal, the two women loathed each other. Sanger, the “icon” now remembered as the mother of Planned Parenthood, spearheaded a mass movement that broke laws and made questionable compromises. Dennett, the “idealist,” played a more genteel inside game, lobbying Congress for a permanent change to the Comstock Act.

Obviously, they should have coordinated their efforts. But Dennett made a foolish mistake about Sanger early on, and Sanger never forgave her. Gorton adeptly shows how their contrasting backgrounds and personalities fed a grudge that helped shape our current world. The fact that you’ve probably heard of Sanger but not of Dennett tells you who prevailed at the time. But, as Gorton notes, the debate about whether court challenges or statutory change is the wiser long-term strategy has been renewed after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Gorton doesn’t shy away from the fact that both women allied themselves with the racist and xenophobic eugenics movement, which put “a scientific sheen on white supremacy and ableism.” Dennett and Sanger, she writes, “were intent on disrupting a specific form of oppression and yet were active in perpetuating another.” Wherever readers fall on the impact and morality of the two reformers, after reading Gorton’s fair-minded biography, it’s indisputable that their efforts helped an increasing number of ordinary Americans use birth control more safely and effectively. As Gorton writes, “Dennett and Sanger were instrumental in forcing lawmakers to recognize the kind of world Americans actually lived in, one where fertility control was nearly universally practiced.”

 

The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryNatureHistory

Immerse your book club in the wonders of the natural world with 4 inspiring stories

Feature by Julie Hale

In Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, Tiya Miles explores the lives of a group of remarkable women. As she tells the stories of Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Tubman, Pocahontas and other notable female figures, Miles looks at the ways in which the great outdoors impacted their personal development and understanding of the world. Her narrative is a beautifully observed testament to the importance of place. Reading groups will find a range of discussion topics, including women’s empowerment and the influence of nature.

What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman offers fresh perspectives on the nocturnal predator. Over the centuries, the owl has been portrayed as intelligent, vigilant and enlightened while remaining strangely inscrutable. Ackerman penetrates the bird’s unique mystique as she teams up with ornithologists and other experts to find out how owls connect with each other, acquire food and migrate. Blending the latest research with her own discerning impressions, Ackerman delivers an exceptional scientific study that’s revealing and accessible.

In Bicycling With Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration, Sara Dykman shares the story of the remarkable odyssey she undertook in 2017. Beginning in Mexico and traveling on a ramshackle bike, Dykman followed the migration course of the eastern monarch butterfly to draw attention to the vulnerability of the species. In a tale that’s funny, insightful and poetic, Dykman reflects on the fragility of nature and the challenges of bike travel, and acquaints readers with the majestic monarch. Themes of ecology, exploration and solitude make this a rewarding book club pick.

Melissa L. Sevigny chronicles the journey of two mavericks in Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon. The hazards of the Colorado River did not deter botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, who navigated the treacherous waterway in 1938 in order to index the Grand Canyon’s plant species. Aided by a small team, the duo traveled for 43 days. Sevigny brings their expedition to vivid life in a narrative that’s at once a rip-roaring adventure story and a thoughtful account of the natural world.

Fall is a terrific time to connect with nature. Grab one of these books, gather your friends and get outside!
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryAmerican History

The Bluestockings

Review by Roger Bishop

In 18th-century England, women and men had no setting where it was acceptable to converse as equals on intellectual subjects like literature, fine art, foreign affairs, history, philosophy and science. That is, until women began hosting lively gatherings that defied sexist gender norms.

When Elizabeth Montagu began hosting her salons in her house in London, she started a trend that historian Susannah Gibson calls “the centerpiece of the first women’s liberation movement.” Gibson’s meticulously researched and beautifully written The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement tells how this groundbreaking development changed the lives of women who achieved prestige as novelists, poets, translators and advocates of education.

Gibson spotlights salon hosts Elizabeth Montagu and Hester Thrale alongside prominent intellectual figures of the period: novelists Frances Burney and Sarah Scott, poets Ann Yearsley and Hannah More, author and advocate Mary Wollstonecraft and historian Catharine Macaulay. “Whatever magic Montagu weaved within the walls of her salon,” writes Gibson, “the old spell was broken and the learned lady—so despised elsewhere—suddenly became a desirable person to know . . . even an aspirational figure.” Macaulay is of particular interest because her experience is emblematic of the existent societal tension. Her multivolume history of England was widely praised, yet she dealt with “an enormous amount of male prejudice.”

The term “bluestocking” “caught on as a way of valuing intellectual endeavors above fashion.”  While Gibson acknowledges the diversity of opinions among the Bluestockings, she writes that, on the whole, they “were advocating for the most fundamental woman’s right: the right to be acknowledged as an independent individual of inherent worth.” Laying the groundwork of a whole new worldview, the movement influenced the suffragists of the next century. Consistently enlightening and insightful, The Bluestockings should be widely read by both women and men.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, The Bluestockings recounts the lives of 18th-century women who forged a path for feminist movements to come.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryCultural History

Swimming Pretty

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

It’s been 40 years since synchronized swimming was accepted as an Olympic discipline, and Vicki Valosik’s Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water is an excellent way to celebrate the anniversary. 

In her introduction, the author—a masters synchronized swimmer herself—recounts her own history with the sport. Curiosity drew her to a class at her local pool, and there she found swimmers several decades her senior who “were all as graceful as mermaids and generously set about teaching me, the beginner, the foundational body positions and propulsion techniques of synchronized swimming.” As her lung capacity increased, her confidence grew and the central question of Swimming Pretty surfaced: “Are we athletes first or are we performers? Is what we are doing a sport or is it entertainment?” 

Esther Williams may have been the best known synchronized swimmer thanks to her groundbreaking Hollywood career, but in this captivating, multifaceted book, Valosik reveals that Williams was preceded (and followed) by a long line of skilled and talented women. Together, these women helped to change everything from safety practices to swimsuit design, embodying women’s strength and artistry along the way.

Just a couple centuries ago, Valosik explains, swimming was only for men, including Benjamin Franklin, who practiced “scientific swimming” in the early 1700s. In the 1800s, women were permitted to join the water scene when “ornamental swimming” in tanks became popular entertainment. Australian swimming champion and stuntwoman Annette Kellerman became famous in early 1900s American vaudeville and has often been called “the mother of synchronized swimming.” 

Interest in the sport remained strong through the decades, surging after exhibitions in various 1930s world’s fairs and Williams’ midcentury “aquamusicals.” When synchronized swimming debuted at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984, it was a cause for celebration and, competitors hoped, a turning point. Valosik writes, “they had finally made it and were eager to show the world not what synchronized swimming once was, but what it had become.” 

Although the sport has since gone global, areas of debate remain, including its 2017 name change to “artistic swimming” and the addition of male competitors in 2024. Thanks to Valosik’s extensive research and gift for illustrating the ways in which her titular women in water have influenced history, culture and athletics, readers surely will be inspired to view synchronized swimming in a new light—and perhaps even attempt a “rocket split bent knee twirl hybrid” themselves.  

Vicki Valosik’s captivating Swimming Pretty charts the evolution of women’s swimming and aquatic performance.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryMiddle Eastern HistoryHistory

Woman, Life, Freedom

Review by Kelly Blewett

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoirs Persepolis and Persepolis II—and the Oscar-nominated film adapted from the books—tell the story of the author-illustrator’s coming of age in 1980s Iran. Her new work is concerned with the life of another young Iranian woman, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested, detained and severely beaten because some of her hair escaped her headscarf in 2022. Civilian protests erupted in Iran and were quickly taken up elsewhere, the movement’s slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” echoing around the world.

Satrapi’s new graphic anthology, Woman, Life, Freedom, presents the story of the titular movement through short graphic vignettes. The project pairs artists with experts on Iran: Satrapi herself, plus two journalists and an Iranian-born Stanford University professor. These experts composed the words that accompany each of the 23 vignettes, which are divided among three sections that detail Amini’s death and the aftermath; contextualize the events in light of late 20th-century revolutions; and explore everyday life in Iran today, where tensions increasingly show a divide between the ruling party and the people. The vignettes demonstrate the complexity of interactions among residents: State-sanctioned violence, surveillance and propaganda foment confusion and sow mistrust among neighbors. The predominant culture is one of fear.

Some of the graphic illustrations in Woman, Life, Freedom read like political cartoons, while others offer intimate scenes of daily life. The styles reflect the individuality of the creators—swooping, impressionistic, single-color and frameless illustrations exist alongside framed, sequenced, multicolor ones. In all cases, the visual medium enhances the storytelling and creates an immersive reading experience that accessibly communicates information. In my favorite vignettes, such as “In the Heart of the Diaspora,” I felt like I was eavesdropping on conversations that felt both familiar and incredibly complex, much as I felt while reading Persepolis.

Satrapi’s memoirs were widely praised for creating complex images of Iran that probed the subjective, everyday experiences of people living there. She brings the same ability to relate to readers here. She writes in her preface that an aim of the book is to “remind Iranians that they are not alone.” The anthology is being published in many languages for distribution around the world and made freely available online in Persian for Iranian readers. Woman, Life, Freedom offers a look at the human toll of an authoritarian regime, and a people’s heroic, ongoing movement against it.

Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi’s new anthology offers a look at the human toll of Iran’s authoritarian regime, and a people’s heroic, ongoing movement against it.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryTrue CrimeNatureLiteratureHistory

3 wickedly entertaining books to give to mystery fans

Feature by Deborah Hopkinson

Gardening Can Be Murder  

Horticultural expert Marta McDowell has explored the links between writers and gardens in previous books about Beatrix Potter, Frances Hodgson Burnett and U.S. presidents. It’s only natural that she’s turned her attention to the ways in which gardens have played a role in mysteries. After all, she says, “In gardens, the struggle between life and death is laid bare.”

McDowell’s Gardening Can Be Murder is as full of delights as an English cottage garden in summer. McDowell explores the connection between gardens to mysteries from all sorts of angles (as any good detective would). She provides an overview of gardening detectives from classic to contemporary, beginning with Sergeant Cuff in Wilkie Collins’ 1868 thriller The Moonstone. Cuff is a “horticulturally inclined investigator” who dreams of retiring from catching thieves to grow roses. Naturally, McDowell includes Miss Jane Marple, who often makes use of gardening and bird-watching to inform her keen-witted observations of life—and death—in St. Mary Mead. 

McDowell discusses gardens as crime scenes, as well as gardens and flowers as motives. In a chapter playfully entitled “Means: Dial M for Mulch,” she recounts examples of the deadly use of garden implements in crime fiction. Poisons, of course, merit their own chapter, and McDowell also investigates authors such as Agatha Christie, who lovingly cared for the gardens of her country home, Greenway; Rex Stout, “an indoor plant whiz”; and contemporary author Naomi Hirahara, who writes the Japantown mystery series as well as books on Japanese American gardens.

Along with photos and period illustrations, the book is visually enhanced by Yolanda Fundora’s distinctive silhouette illustrations. As an added bonus, McDowell appends a reading list of plant-related mysteries, ranging from The Moonstone to 21st-century writer Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series. It’s not always possible to garden in winter, so dig into this book and enjoy! 

★ The League of Lady Poisoners

Lisa Perrin, an illustrator who teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art, begins her highly entertaining and lavishly illustrated study of 25 female poisoners with this dedication: “For my parents, who really hoped my first book would be a nice children’s picture book.” And while The League of Lady Poisoners may not be for young children, it’s a sure bet that adults will eat up (pun intended) this original, thought-provoking and visually stunning book.

Perrin’s sense of color and design makes it a pleasure to simply turn the pages. The distinctive arsenic green on the eye-catching cover is used to excellent effect throughout, often as the sole color offsetting a stylized pen-and-ink illustration. For example, a skeleton with green bloodlines graces Perrin’s introduction to poisons, which includes a “toxic timeline” tracing the knowledge of plant poisons back to around 3000 BCE in ancient Egypt. There are also some gorgeous botanical illustrations of poisonous plants and creatures. (One can’t help wonder: Will they inspire some new nature-themed mysteries?)

Perrin organizes her profiles by the motives that led these women to perform their deadly deeds: money and greed, anger and revenge, and love and obsession. Each main subject appears as a full-page, color illustration, beginning with Locusta, a poison expert and assassin for hire in first-century Rome. 

While some names, such as Cleopatra, will be familiar to readers, Perrin’s well-documented research has unearthed little known stories including that of the women of Nagyrév, a small village in Hungary, who in the early 1900s sought to poison their abusive husbands with arsenic. With the aid of a midwife, the poisoning “epidemic” took hold, with at least 40 confirmed murders. Years later, when the police finally investigated, some women were sent to prison or executed while others women died by suicide to avoid such fates. 

Despite its gruesome subject matter, The League of Lady Poisoners is a beautiful book. And who knows? Perhaps Perrin will turn her attention to fictional poisoners next.

Murderabilia

Readers interested in the history of true crime will be fascinated by Harold Schechter’s clever new book, Murderabilia. The title refers to objects owned by killers or otherwise connected to their crimes—artifacts that are often sold on the internet in the present day. But as Schechter makes clear, this impulse to look at or collect grisly mementos has been around for a long time. 

Schechter brings a lifetime of research to this topic: He is Professor Emeritus at Queens College, where he has taught for four decades. Along with nonfiction works about serial killers, he’s also penned detective novels featuring Edgar Allan Poe and has a novelist’s sense of what makes a good story. And the stories here are good. As he uncovers the history of 100 grisly artifacts, Schechter provides a fascinating examination of the often unexpected and surprising ways in which crime has seeped into social history and popular culture. 

Schechter begins in 1808, with the tombstone of Naomi Wise, a North Carolina indentured servant who became pregnant by a clerk named Jonathan Lewis. Lewis promised to elope with Wise, but instead he strangled her. This sad tale was memorialized in the murder ballad “Little Omie”; in other words, we’re not the first to find the gruesome compelling.

Given the author’s deep familiarity with Poe, the master of the macabre makes an appearance here too, with Schechter linking one of Poe’s detective stories to the 1841 murder of Mary Rogers, a cigar girl. Schechter also details other kinds of murderabilia, including a hammer wielded by John Colt to murder a printer; a kind of bottled mineral water that nurse Jane Toppan laced with poison and used to kill 31 people; and a shovel used by serial killer H.H. Holmes.

Short chapters and copious illustrations make Murderabilia a great choice to leave on the night table to dip into before bed. Then again, given the subject matter, maybe not.

If you don’t have a clue what to get the true crime lovers and cozy mystery readers on your gift list, fear not—we’ve done the detecting for you.
NonfictionFictionWomen's HistoryHistoryHistorical FictionEuropean History

Honor the unsung women of history with your book club

Feature by Julie Hale

Mark Braude’s Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris takes an in-depth look at Kiki de Montparnasse, a painter and performer who served as a muse to a number of the era’s preeminent artists, including photographer Man Ray. Longtime lovers and creative collaborators, Kiki and Man Ray worked together to produce some of his most famous images. In this wonderfully detailed history, Braude spotlights Kiki’s background and unique genius, her turbulent relationship with Man Ray and lasting impact on popular culture. Readers who are fascinated with the Lost Generation will savor this atmospheric account of bohemian Paris. 

In her captivating historical novel Becoming Madame Mao, Anchee Min tells the coming-of-age story of Yunhe, who is born into poverty in rural China but defies expectations by becoming the wife of Mao Zedong. Yunhe leaves home with hopes of becoming an actress, changes her name, enlists in the Red Army and eventually marries Mao. Min mixes fact and fiction as she depicts their troubled relationship and Yunhe’s evolution into a woman of political influence. This beautifully executed novel offers rich discussion topics including Chinese history and politics, gender roles and female agency. 

With The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire, Jack Weatherford takes readers back in time to 13th-century Eurasia, when formidable women like Khutulun and Mandukhai the Wise helped to ensure the dominance of the Mongol Empire by developing commerce, supporting education and fighting in battle. Their stories appear to have been intentionally deleted from Secret History of the Mongols, an account of Genghis Khan’s reign that appeared in the 13th century. In this fascinating, well-researched narrative, Weatherford highlights their remarkable accomplishments while immersing readers in Mongol culture.  

Set in the 19th century and inspired by historical events, The Last Queen: A Novel of Courage and Resistance by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni chronicles the life of Jindan, a lowborn Indian girl who married Maharaja Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Sikh Empire. After the death of her husband, Jindan’s young son assumes the role of maharaja. Acting as regent, Jindan develops into a strong leader who is perceived as a threat by the British Empire. A bestseller in India, the book’s powerful themes of motherhood and female fulfillment provide great talking points for reading groups.

Behind every great man, there’s a woman—often with an excellent book about her.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryBlack History

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts

Review by Priscilla Kipp

The written narratives of enslaved people offer a window into circumstances that are, to most of us, unimaginable. These vital documents immortalize the names of their authors: Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northup and Harriet Jacobs, among them. But one woman wrote anonymously, perhaps trusting history to keep her secret until it was safe for her identity to be revealed. In The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative, Harvard University professor Gregg Hecimovich sets out to find the woman who wrote The Bondwoman’s Narrative, an unpublished manuscript bought at auction by renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2001. Hecimovich relies on the scholarship of Gates and others to celebrate the life and work of the first Black female novelist, Hannah Bond—more than a century after her death.

Scholars have suggested other candidates to fit the bondwoman’s identity—women who walked similar paths from slavery to freedom in the antebellum South of North Carolina, Virginia and Washington. Yet Hecimovich successfully braids together the fictitious details of the novel’s protagonist with Bond’s autobiography, leaving little doubt about the truth. Thanks to his deep research—and despite remaining gaps in the historical record—the titular bondwoman comes vividly to life.

As a “domestic servant,” Bond was at the mercy of her enslavers, who sexually abused her and cruelly severed her family ties—a practice especially rampant after the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, when slave owners increasingly forced their captives to reproduce and then sold their children. Bond lost her mother and her child, but she held onto her hunger to learn and become literate. She especially leaned on Charles Dickens and Bleak House for help in creating her writing.

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts is a vivid introduction to America’s first Black female novelist.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryBiography

The Exceptions

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In 1999, author Kate Zernike, then a reporter for The Boston Globe, broke an enormous story: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology had admitted to a long-standing pattern of discrimination against women on its faculty. Zernike, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, tells the full inspiring story in The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science.

Zernike begins by focusing on molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins’ life and career path. In the spring of 1963, Hopkins, a Radcliffe junior, became so enthralled by a Harvard lecture on DNA by Nobel Prize winner James Watson that she sought work in his molecular biology lab. But like other women then and now, Hopkins faced difficult choices as she weighed the demands of science against marriage and potential motherhood. Zernike situates the tensions that led to the end of Hopkins’ first marriage within the broader context of the women’s movement of the 1960s. Eventually Hopkins earned her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1971, and by 1973, she had accepted a position at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research.

While the biographical sections are intriguing, Zernike’s narrative picks up speed in the later portions of the book, which delve into the ways male colleagues appropriated Hopkins’ work and used it for financial gain. By the 1990s, Hopkins realized that “a woman’s work would never be valued as highly as a man’s. It had taken her twenty years to see it—she’d understood it about other women before she’d realized it was true for her, too.”

Hopkins’ revelation led her to reach out to female colleagues, resulting in a letter by 16 women at MIT compiling evidence of discrimination, including unequal access to research resources and pay. The women spent the next four years doing fact-finding as a committee, and by March of 1999, they had compiled a report. Although it was only scheduled to appear in a faculty newsletter, news of the report reached Zernike’s ears—and when Zernike’s article appeared on the front page of the Globe, the story took off. Hopkins arrived on campus the next day to camera crews, and she received emails from women across the world. Overnight, MIT became a “pacesetter for promoting gender equality,” and other universities soon undertook similar efforts to examine their biases.

Zernike closes her narrative with updates on Hopkins’ continued successful career, short bios of the 16 women who signed the original letter and an examination of the progress for women in academia—and the work still to be done. These women’s efforts—and the subsequent impact this revelation had for women across academia—make for a gripping, page-turning read.

Kate Zernike’s impeccably researched book about MIT’s discrimination against its female faculty members is both enlightening and inspiring.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryBiography

Untold Power

Review by Priscilla Kipp

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the controversial first lady of 28th president Woodrow Wilson, had some impressive predecessors. There was women’s rights advocate Abigail Adams, wife of second president John Adams and mother of sixth president John Quincy Adams. During the War of 1812, Dolley Madison, wife of fourth president James Madison, rescued the nation’s treasured artwork from a burning White House. Edith was also followed by trailblazers, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, whose looming legacies have sometimes left Edith in history’s shadow. With Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson, historian Rebecca Boggs Roberts gives Edith her due, demonstrating that, as the first unelected woman to govern the country, Edith has no match.

Like several other first ladies, Edith had little formal education. She came from a Virginia family who had been dispossessed after the Civil War and grew up in a crowded apartment above a general store, which she eventually left for Washington, D.C., where a tall, striking beauty like herself could better shine. When she married Norman Galt, a jewelry business owner, she became his helpmate; when he died, she became a working widow. 

Woodrow lost his first wife, Ellen, soon after taking office in 1913. When he was introduced to Edith, he promptly fell in love. He shared with her every aspect of his work, soon darkened by the looming threat of a world war that many Americans wanted no part of. During those early years of her marriage, Edith knew her place—and how to get around it. When women were not allowed at important White House meetings, she hid in drapes to watch. When a stroke left Woodrow incapacitated shortly into his second term, Edith quietly took over, deciding which pieces of news wouldn’t be too stressful for him, who could visit and how to keep everyone, especially his political enemies and the press, from seeing the truth of the president’s condition.

Untold Power brims with details, from the colors of the signature orchids Edith wore to the troubled corners of Woodrow’s mind after his stroke. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge is there, bent on destroying the president’s obsessive quest for a League of Nations, and sheep populate the White House lawn (one of Edith’s successful—and profitable—wartime ideas). This well-told history, based on sources that are often at odds with Edith’s own memoir, also begs the question: How could so much in the White House have gone unseen and unknown for so long? And, chillingly, could it happen again?

With Untold Power, Rebecca Boggs Roberts gives first lady Edith Wilson her due, demonstrating that, as the first unelected woman to govern the country, Wilson has no match.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

4 books about women you’ll wish you’d read in history class

Feature by Julie Hale

Tomiko Brown-Nagin pays tribute to a history maker in Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality. Born in Connecticut in 1921, Constance Baker Motley studied law at Columbia University and went on to serve as a federal judge, becoming the first Black woman to do so. She was instrumental in ending Jim Crow and in arguing Brown vs. Board of Education. Brown-Nagin’s richly detailed narrative chronicles Motley’s working-class background and her rise in law and politics. Book clubs will enjoy digging into complex topics such as gender, social justice and the nature of power.

The Woman They Could Not Silence: The Shocking Story of a Woman Who Dared to Fight Back by Kate Moore is a fascinating look at the life of Elizabeth Packard, who was wrongfully sent to an Illinois insane asylum by her husband in 1860. During her confinement in the asylum, where living conditions were appalling, Packard found other women who had been unfairly institutionalized. Determined to stand up for herself and her sister inmates, Packard advocated for their rights against all odds. Packard is an extraordinary figure, and Moore brings her to vivid life in this haunting book.

Dorothy Wickenden’s The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights focuses on a trio of formidable women from the 19th century—Harriet Tubman, Frances A. Seward and Martha Coffin Wright—each of whom worked to further the causes of freedom and equality at a critical time in America. Wickenden documents the lives of these groundbreaking women, showing how their controversial work impacted their personal relationships and social standing. Themes of loyalty, family and feminism will inspire rewarding dialogue among readers.

In The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II, Judith Mackrell spotlights a roster of unforgettable journalists who forged their own paths as war reporters despite red tape, gender-based prejudice and the hardships of international conflict. Mackrell tells the personal stories of Martha Gellhorn, Clare Hollingworth, Lee Miller, Sigrid Schultz, Helen Kirkpatrick and Virginia Cowles while exploring their remarkable contributions to history. Thoroughly researched and briskly written, Mackrell’s salute to a group of intrepid writers captures the spirit of an era.

Celebrate Women’s History Month with your reading group by picking up a book that honors overlooked female trailblazers.

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