The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, First Edition


Chris Enss - 2017
    But the true story of Kate Warne, an operative of the Pinkerton Agency and the first woman detective in America-and the stories of the other women who served their country as part of the storied crew of crime fighters-are not well known. For the first time, the stories of these intrepid women are collected here and richly illustrated throughout with numerous historical photographs. From Kate Warne's probable affair with Allan Pinkerton, and her part in saving the life of Abraham Lincoln in 1861 to the lives and careers of the other women who broke out of the Cult of True Womanhood in pursuit of justice, these true stories add another dimension to our understanding of American history.

Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color


Chandler O'Leary - 2016
    Based on the beloved Dead Feminists letterpress poster series, this illuminating look at 27 women who ve changed the world features a foreword by Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Intricate and beautiful broadside art takes center stage in this richly visual book that ties inspiring women and the challenges they faced to today s most important issues. The book revisits the original posters plus adds new art, archival photographs, and ephemera to tell the stories of feminists such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rachel Carson, and more. Dead Feminists takes feminist inspiration to a new level of artistry and shows how ordinary and extraordinary women have made a difference throughout history (and how you can too). Featured Feminists Adina De Zavala Alice Paul Annie Oakley Babe Zaharias Eleanor Roosevelt Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Zimmerman Emma Goldman Fatima al-Fihri Gwendolyn Brooks Harriet Tubman Imogen Cunningham Jane Mecom Marie Curie Queen Lili uokalani Rachel Carson Rywka Lipszyc Sadako Sasaki Sappho Sarojini Naidu Shirley Chisholm Thea Foss Virginia Woolf Washington State Suffragists"

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency


Bea Koch - 2020
    The popular image of the Regency continues to be mythologized by the hundreds of romance novels set in the period, which focus almost exclusively on wealthy, white, Christian members of the upper classes.But there are hundreds of fascinating women who don't fit history books limited perception of what was historically accurate for early 19th century England. Women like Dido Elizabeth Belle, whose mother was a slave but was raised by her white father's family in England, Caroline Herschel, who acted as her brother's assistant as he hunted the heavens for comets, and ended up discovering eight on her own, Anne Lister, who lived on her own terms with her common-law wife at Shibden Hall, and Judith Montefiore, a Jewish woman who wrote the first English language Kosher cookbook.As one of the owners of the successful romance-only bookstore The Ripped Bodice, Bea Koch has had a front row seat to controversies surrounding what is accepted as "historically accurate" for the wildly popular Regency period. Following in the popular footsteps of books like Ann Shen's Bad Girls Throughout History, Koch takes the Regency, one of the most loved and idealized historical time periods and a huge inspiration for American pop culture, and reveals the independent-minded, standard-breaking real historical women who lived life on their terms. She also examines broader questions of culture in chapters that focus on the LGBTQ and Jewish communities, the lives of women of color in the Regency, and women who broke barriers in fields like astronomy and paleontology. In Mad and Bad, we look beyond popular perception of the Regency into the even more vibrant, diverse, and fascinating historical truth.

Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism


Seyward Darby - 2020
    Trump, journalist Seyward Darby went looking for the women of the so-called alt-right--really just white nationalism with a new label. The mainstream media depicted the alt-right as a bastion of angry white men, but was it? As women headlined resistance to the Trump administration's bigotry and sexism, most notably at the women's marches, Darby wanted to know why others were joining a movement espousing racism and anti-feminism. Who were these women, and what did their activism reveal about America's past, present, and future? Darby researched dozens of women across the country before settling on three: Corinna Olsen, Ayla Stewart, and Lana Lokteff. Each was born in 1979 and became a white nationalist in the post-9/11 era. Their respective stories of radicalization upend much of what we assume about women, politics, and political extremism.

The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace


Lynn Povich - 2012
    For many, filing the suit was a radicalizing act that empowered them to "find themselves" and stake a claim. Others lost their way in a landscape of opportunities, pressures, discouragements, and hostilities they weren't prepared to navigate.With warmth, humor, and perspective, the book also explores why changes in the law did not change everything for today's young women.

With Her Fist Raised: Dorothy Pitman Hughes and the Transformative Power of Black Community Activism


Laura L. Lovett - 2021
    After leaving rural Georgia in the 1950s, she moved to New York, determined to fight for civil rights and equality. Historian Laura L. Lovett traces Hughes's journey as she became a powerhouse activist, responding to the needs of her community and building a platform for its empowerment. She created lasting change by revitalizing her West Side neighborhood, which was subjected to racial discrimination, with nonexistent childcare and substandard housing, where poverty, drug use, a lack of job training, and the effects of the Vietnam War were evident. Hughes created a high-quality childcare center that also offered job training, adult education classes, a Youth Action corps, housing assistance, and food resources. Her realization that her neighborhood could be revitalized by actively engaging and including the community was prescient.As her stature grew to a national level, Hughes spent several years traversing the country with Steinem and educating people about feminism, childcare, and race. She moved to Harlem in the 1970s to counter gentrification and bought the franchise to the Miss Greater New York City pageant to demonstrate that Black was beautiful. She also opened an office supply store and became a powerful voice for Black women entrepreneurs and Black-owned businesses. Throughout every phase of her life, Hughes understood the transformative power of activism for Black communities.With expert research, which includes Hughes's own accounts of her life, With Her Fist Raised is the necessary biography of a pivotal figure in women's history and Black feminism whose story will finally be told.

Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists


Jean H. Baker - 2005
    Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, Alice Paul. At their revolution's start in the 1840s, a woman's right to speak in public was questioned. By its conclusion in 1920, the victory in woman's suffrage had also encompassed the most fundamental rights of citizenship: the right to control wages, hold property, to contract, to sue, to testify in court. Their struggle was confrontational (women were the first to picket the White House for a political cause) and violent (women were arrested, jailed, and force-fed in prisons). And like every revolutionary before them, their struggle was personal.For the first time, the eminent historian Jean H. Baker tellingly interweaves these women's private lives with their public achievements, presenting these revolutionary women in three dimensions, humanized, and marvelously approachable.

Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners


Therese Oneill - 2016
    (Why? Shush, dear. A lady doesn't question.) UNMENTIONABLE is your hilarious, illustrated, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood, giving you detailed advice on: ~ What to wear ~ Where to relieve yourself ~ How to conceal your loathsome addiction to menstruating ~ What to expect on your wedding night ~ How to be the perfect Victorian wife ~ Why masturbating will kill you ~ And moreIrresistibly charming, laugh-out-loud funny, and featuring nearly 200 images from Victorian publications, UNMENTIONABLE will inspire a whole new level of respect for Elizabeth Bennett, Scarlet O'Hara, Jane Eyre, and all of our great, great grandmothers. (And it just might leave you feeling ecstatically grateful to live in an age of pants, super absorbency tampons, epidurals, anti-depressants, and not-dying-of-the-syphilis-your-husband-brought-home.)

Renegade Women in Film and TV


Elizabeth Weitzman - 2019
     Renegade Women in Film and TV blends stunning illustrations, fascinating biographical profiles, and exclusive interviews with icons like Barbra Streisand, Rita Moreno, and Sigourney Weaver to celebrate the accomplishments of 50 extraordinary women throughout the history of entertainment. Each profile highlights the groundbreaking accomplishments and essential work of pioneers from the big and small screens, offering little-known facts about household names (Lucille Ball, Oprah Winfrey, Nora Ephron) and crucial introductions to overlooked pioneers (Alla Nazimova, Anna May Wong, Frances Marion). From 19th century iconoclast Alice Guy Blach� to 21st century trailblazer Ava DuVernay, Renegade Women honors the women who succeeded against all odds, changing their industry in front of the camera and behind the scenes.

Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women


Elizabeth Kerri Mahon - 2011
    The famous and the infamous, queens, divorcées, actresses, and outlaws have created a ruckus during their lifetimes-turning heads while making waves. Scandalous Women tells the stories of the risk takers who have flouted convention, beaten the odds, and determined the course of world events.*When Cleopatra (69 BC-30 BC) wasn't bathing in asses' milk, the last pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and forged an important political alliance with Rome against her enemies-until her dalliance with Marc Antony turned the empire against her. *Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1748), a mathematician, physicist, author, and paramour of one of the greatest minds in France, Voltaire, shocked society with her unorthodox lifestyle and intellectual prowess-and became a leader in the study of theoretical physics in France at a time when the sciences were ruled by men.*Long before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1928) fought to end discrimination and the terrible crime of lynching and helped found the NAACP, but became known as a difficult woman for her refusal to compromise and was largely lost in the annals of history.*Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) had a passion for archaeology and languages, and left her privileged world behind to become one of the foremost chroniclers of British imperialism in the Middle East, and one of the architects of the modern nation of Iraq.

The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free


Paulina Bren - 2021
    Liberated from home and hearth by World War I, politically enfranchised and ready to work, women arrived to take their place in the dazzling new skyscrapers of Manhattan. But they did not want to stay in uncomfortable boarding houses. They wanted what men already had—exclusive residential hotels with maid service, workout rooms, and private dining. Built in 1927, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Barbizon Hotel was designed as a luxurious safe haven for the “Modern Woman” hoping for a career in the arts. Over time, it became the place to stay for any ambitious young woman hoping for fame and fortune. Sylvia Plath fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, and, over the years, it’s almost 700 tiny rooms with matching floral curtains and bedspreads housed, among many others, Titanic survivor Molly Brown; actresses Grace Kelly, Liza Minnelli, Ali MacGraw, Jaclyn Smith; and writers Joan Didion, Gael Greene, Diane Johnson, Meg Wolitzer. Mademoiselle magazine boarded its summer interns there, as did Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School its students and the Ford Modeling Agency its young models. Before the hotel’s residents were household names, they were young women arriving at the Barbizon with a suitcase and a dream. Not everyone who passed through the Barbizon’s doors was destined for success—for some, it was a story of dashed hopes—but until 1981, when men were finally let in, the Barbizon offered its residents a room of their own and a life without family obligations. It gave women a chance to remake themselves however they pleased; it was the hotel that set them free. No place had existed like it before or has since. “Poignant and intriguing” (The New Republic), The Barbizon weaves together a tale that has, until now, never been told. It is both a vivid portrait of the lives of these young women looking for something more and a “brilliant many-layered social history of women’s ambition and a rapidly changing New York through the 20th century” (The Guardian).

Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons


Lynn Peril - 2002
    Attaining feminine perfection meant conforming to a mythical standard, one that would come wrapped in an adorable pink package, if those cunning marketers were to be believed. With wise humor and a savvy eye for curious, absurd, and at times wildly funny period artifacts, Lynn Peril gathers here the memorabilia of the era — from kitschy board games and lunch boxes to outdated advice books and health pamphlets — and reminds us how media messages have long endeavored to shape women's behavior and self-image, with varying degrees of success.Vividly illustrated with photographs of vintage paraphernalia, this entertaining social history revisits the nostalgic past, but only to offer a refreshing message to women who lived through those years as well as those who are coming of age now.

Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League


Anika Orrock - 2020
    Author Anika Orrock collects a variety of funny, charming, wince-worthy, and powerful vignettes told by the players themselves about their time playing the American pastime.• Features stories of grit and perseverance against all odds, told by the players themselves• Filled with player statistics, historical beats, headlines, and more; and fully illustrated in Anika's vibrant style• A visually engaging, readable women-led history bookWritten in an approachable manner and beautifully illustrated, The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is a one-of-a-kind story told through the women's own voices and their own perspectives.This book ultimately proves that the incredible women of the AAGPBL truly were in a league of their own.• A unique celebration of a specific moment in women's and sports history• A great read for experienced and new sports fans alike, readers young and old, baseball fans, and anyone looking for an inspiring gift for an aspiring professional sports player• Perfect on the shelf with books like Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky, Strong is the New Pretty by Kate T. Parker, and Rad American Women A-Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries who Shaped Our History . . . and Our Future! by Kate Schatz

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World


Elinor Cleghorn - 2021
     Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis.In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the wandering womb of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis.Packed with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged, and rewritten medical orthodoxy--and the men who controlled their fate--this is a revolutionary examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine. With these case histories, Elinor pays homage to the women who suffered so strides could be made, and shows how being unwell has become normalized in society and culture, where women have long been distrusted as reliable narrators of their own bodies and pain. But the time for real change is long overdue: answers reside in the body, in the testimonies of unwell women--and their lives depend on medicine learning to listen.

Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women's Pain


Abby Norman - 2018
    She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend class, Norman dropped out of college and embarked on what would become a years-long journey to discover what was wrong with her. It wasn't until she took matters into her own hands--securing a job in a hospital and educating herself over lunchtime reading in the medical library--that she found an accurate diagnosis of endometriosis.In Ask Me About My Uterus, Norman describes what it was like to have her pain dismissed, to be told it was all in her head, only to be taken seriously when she was accompanied by a boyfriend who confirmed that her sexual performance was, indeed, compromised. Putting her own trials into a broader historical, sociocultural, and political context, Norman shows that women's bodies have long been the battleground of a never-ending war for power, control, medical knowledge, and truth. It's time to refute the belief that being a woman is a preexisting condition.