Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged women's history

Goodbye Wifes and Daughters

In 1943, as the world dealt with trauma and tragedy in Europe and the Pacific during World War II, another catastrophe unfolded in Bearcreek, Montana. The Smith Coal Mine was one of the largest employers for the town, and the men worked six days a week around the clock to help provide coal for the war effort. But one morning, a fire broke out in the mine and 80 miners were trapped underground with little hope for escape.

The Quotable Abigail Adams

In an age of constant and instant communications, we have to sadly admit that letters are becoming a lost art. Gone are the times when lovers exhausted themselves writing page after page to send slowly across the sea, replaced with 140 character tweets or an iPhone vibrating with a picture message.

Science on the Home Front: American Women Scientists in World War II

Science on the Home Front is an introduction to the lives and tasks of specific women scientists involved in the war effort, from Marie Curie to Margaret Mead. These women come from a variety of backgrounds and pursuits in science. A professor, Jack focuses on the fields of psychology, anthropology, physics and nutrition to elaborate on the women involved who played a specific role in the war.

A Place of Belonging: Five Founding Women of Fairbanks, Alaska

The thing I remember most about my brief visit to Alaska is that even in Anchorage, I could feel the lessening of human population as soon as I stepped off of the plane.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life

Anyone who has ever been interested in the history of feminism knows of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. As author Lori D. Ginzberg notes, much of the focus has shifted towards Anthony, leaving few to know about Stanton.

Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank

When researching medical or social history, one of the things that often becomes apparent is the level of mystery that surrounded women’s bodies and bodily functions. This mystery and speculation is the subject of Randi Hutter Epstein’s Get Me Out. As the title suggests, Hutter Epstein, a medical journalist, presents an overview of ideas related to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth spanning from antiquity to the modern day.

Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller

As a child, I was very intrigued by the life and story of Helen Keller. Though she was deaf, blind, and initially mute, she went on to live a full life: graduating college and publishing books. While Helen Keller’s remarkable story has served as an inspiration to us all, there is an even more remarkable story in her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. I did not know much about Macy aside from her being the person who opened up Keller’s world and became her life-long companion.

Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950 – 1980

In 2004, at the age of twenty-three, I entered my gynecologist's office to request permanent sterilization. My doctor repeatedly refused my request, and would not honor my alternate request for an IUD. I tried changing doctors, but still encountered severe resistance to my wish to be permanently sterilized.

Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal

Rochona Majumdar's firmest statement in Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal is that the Western conception of arranged marriage is dated. The portrayal of arranged marriage as immoral suited the Western sense of superiority over the “Hindoos,” despite the fact that Western courtship was riddled with its own problems. Arranged marriage is obviously the creation of a certain cultural condition and sought to fulfill certain perceived needs.

Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World

From 1922 through 1925, Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle was widely considered to be the best female swimmer in the world, and had no trouble competing, and winning, against men either. In 1926, at the age of nineteen, she became the first woman to swim the English Channel, shattering the previous record by two full hours. Young Woman and the Sea is the story of Trudy Ederle told by sportswriter Glenn Stout, but it is more than a biography.

Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker?

Finally, a documentary on legendary writer Kathy Acker, whose influence on sex-positive, brazen, post-modern feminist literature and art is unsurpassed. Perhaps there would have been no Riot Grrrl movement if Acker had not spoken to a young Kathleen Hanna. Hanna recalls that “Acker asked me why writing was important to me, and I said, ‘Because I felt like I’d never been listened to and I had a lot to say,’ and she said, ‘Then why are you doing spoken word?? No one goes to spoken word shows!

Women's Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan

Women's Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan by Doris Chang offers a compelling history of the recurrent feminist movement in Taiwan’s imperial and post-war eras.

Poems from the Women’s Movement

It’s debatable whether collections of work by “women poets” (or, shudder, “poetesses”) are legitimate groupings. I tend to regard these types of collections with a raised eyebrow, imagining a group of women having an outdoor party, having been shut out of some stuffy jackets-required club, now herded together and pushed through the doors all at once to their dismay.

Women Build the Welfare State: Performing Charity and Creating Rights in Argentina, 1880-1955

Donna J. Guy is a distinguished Argentinean historian, and her book on women’s role in the welfare state (1880-1955) could not be timelier. In the past decades, human rights have often been thwarted in Argentina, producing the need for a reevaluation of women’s rights in South America.

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Of the many staggering statistics in Victoria Law’s eight-year study, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women, the following fact will make your jaw drop: the number of incarcerated women in United States prisons has almost doubled from 68,468 to 104,848 between 1995 and 2004. Like their male counterparts, this population of women is overwhelmingly comprised of African Americans and Latinas, which can be largely attributed to racial prof

Gender Violence in Russia: The Politics of Feminist Intervention

In periods of rapid social change, the poets of one ideological system or another rush to find the cogent metaphor or, more recently, the winning soundbite, that will interpret the change to suit their own ends, to control meaning. To find and sell the right descriptive phrase is to raise the flag of possession over a historical event. For example, the collapse of the Soviet Union—or, even more stridently, the U.S.

Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball

Stolen Bases is as intelligent and powerful as any professional U.S. women’s baseball team would be, should be, and could be...if any were supported enough to exist.

Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II

Making Marriage Modern by Christina Simmons explores the many changes to marriage, courtship, and women’s role in society that took place following the Victorian era until World War II.

The Widows' Might: Widowhood and Gender in Early British America

Honest. Scheming. Haughty. Charitable. Sinful. Virtuous. These are just some of the words used to describe American colonial widows by their contemporaries. Widows complicate the classic boundaries of the roles of “wife” or “mother,” and often have been forced out of the private sphere of their households into the public sphere of business in order to support themselves and their families.

No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball

The premise of No Girls in the Clubhouse is that baseball could be successfully gender-integrated at all levels with no disadvantage to either side, but social expectations—not biological deficiency—exclude women from full participation in the sport. Feminists won't be surprised to learn how, in anthropologist Marilyn Cohen's analysis, the historical achievements of female baseball players have been obscured.

First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War

Before reading First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War, I didn’t even know to whom Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America from 1861-1865, was married. The book is certainly educational, and was interesting to read about the war from a Southern perspective rather than the Union point of view I received in my U.S.

Mrs. Lincoln: A Life

Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton, is a fascinating account of this very complicated and very misunderstood woman. I knew little about Mary Todd prior to reading this book and what I did know was mostly based on my own mythical ideas about Honest Abe and his wife Mary.

Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy

Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy is not light, bedtime reading. The book is a compilation of ten academic essays discussing the influence Jane Addams had on democracy, the definition of socialism, and on the concept of cooperation.

Personal Moments in the Lives of Victorian Women: Selections From Their Autobiographies (Book 2)

In her biography of May Duignan—better known as the notorious "Chicago May"—the late Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain notes that cemeteries are full of women whose life stories died with them, and that women's autobiographies are a critical part of lost history.

Personal Moments in the Lives of Victorian Women: Selections from Their Autobiographies (Book 1)

I have to admit that when I received my copy of Personal Moments in the Lives of Victorian Women, I wasn't exactly excited to snuggle up and read it from start to finish. The cover art is not particularly appealing, as it depicts an antique black and white photo of a rather serious and unhappy looking woman, and makes the book look about as inviting as a textbook.

Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster

Mistress of the Monarchy is a biography of Katherine Swynford, the Duchess of Lancaster. Swynford was the long-time mistress and eventual third wife of John of Gaunt.

Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC

Sometimes when I read autobiographies and biographies of revered artists, pioneers, and notables, I often become absorbed in their beginnings as if they were happening in the present moment and their endings as if they had just passed. This is done easily when the writer blends eloquence with knowledge as is the case with Karen Chilton.

Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita Gonzalez, and the Poetics of Culture

Native Speakers places the work of three foundational female folklorists in conversation to illuminate an often silenced part of feminist intellectual history, the ethnographic and folklore scholarship of women of color. Analyzing the ethnographic and fictional work of Dakota ethnographer Ella Deloria, African American folkloris

Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War

A book about women's involvement in war that shows, in part, their commitment to nonviolence? It may seem contradictory, but it's just one of the fascinating aspects of this well-researched book, Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War. Jensen presents case studies ranging from female physicians and aid workers to women in combat, delving into their relationships with the state and the dynamics of violence.

Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe

Let me start out by saying that I am not a fan of non-fiction books. Seriously, the only things I read that can be categorized as historical are also categorized under romance. I expected this book to be like the ones I had to read for history classes in college: boring and never ending. It wasn’t an experience I was looking forward to. So imagine my surprise when I started reading and found that not only was the book interesting, it was so compelling that I literally could not put it down. I loved this book.
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