Book picks similar to
Women, Marriage, and Politics, 1860-1914 by Pat Jalland
history
british-history
19th-century
non-fiction-history
The Measure of Success: Uncovering the Biblical Perspective on Women, Work, and the Home
Carolyn McCulley - 2014
Far from the stone-throwing arguments that often occupy the discussion around women, work, and the home, Carolyn and Nora show how the redemptive message of the gospel allows the Bible's teaching on the role of women to coexist with ambition. It creates a fresh vision for the profit we all gain from encouraging female contribution in the home, society, and church. If you've ever wondered whether you're living the life that most glorifies God, The Measure of Success will help you answer that question.
Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth-Century to Modern Times
Lucy Lethbridge - 2013
A compassionate and discerning exploration of the complex relationship between the server, the served, and the world they lived in, Servants opens a window onto British society from the Edwardian period to the present.
Uppity Women of the New World
Vicki León - 2001
This collection of real-life stories about female pioneers covers more than 225 women living between the early 1500s and the mid-1800s who contributed to the exploration of the New World as they battled against slavery, formed friendships with Indians, and dressed as men to fight in wars.
Wartime Women: A Mass Observation Anthology
Dorothy Sheridan - 1990
Dorothy Sheridan has plundered its astonishingly rich archives to put together this anthology of women's experience in the Second World War. What was this experience? How far did it go to liberate women? Was it the opportunity that so many expected or was it simply six years of deprivation, hard work and pain?WARTIME WOMEN allows us to explore these questions through the writings of women living through the war years. Dorothy Sheridan has chosen extracts from the whole range of Mass-Observation material including research reports, letters, dairies and detailed questionnaires. The range of contributors is enormous from a fish and chip shop worker in Birmingham to Irish immigrant munitions factory workers, young women welders in Yorkshire and a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl in Essex.'My horror of all this war business is qualified by an eagerness to be a unit of it. I feel as if I have been waiting for this all my life and I have just realised it' A young woman writing in her diary in September, 1939.
The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade
Ann Fessler - 2006
Wade In this deeply moving work, Ann Fessler brings to light the lives of hundreds of thousands of young single American women forced to give up their newborn children in the years following World War II and before Roe v. Wade. The Girls Who Went Away tells a story not of wild and carefree sexual liberation, but rather of a devastating double standard that has had punishing long-term effects on these women and on the children they gave up for adoption. Based on Fessler's groundbreaking interviews, it brings to brilliant life these women's voices and the spirit of the time, allowing each to share her own experience in gripping and intimate detail. Today, when the future of the Roe decision and women's reproductive rights stand squarely at the front of a divisive national debate, Fessler brings to the fore a long-overlooked history of single women in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. In 2002, Fessler, an adoptee herself, traveled the country interviewing women willing to speak publicly about why they relinquished their children. Researching archival records and the political and social climate of the time, she uncovered a story of three decades of women who, under enormous social and family pressure, were coerced or outright forced to give their babies up for adoption. Fessler deftly describes the impossible position in which these women found themselves: as a sexual revolution heated up in the postwar years, birth control was tightly restricted, and abortion proved prohibitively expensive or life endangering. At the same time, a postwar economic boom brought millions of American families into the middle class, exerting its own pressures to conform to a model of family perfection. Caught in the middle, single pregnant women were shunned by family and friends, evicted from schools, sent away to maternity homes to have their children alone, and often treated with cold contempt by doctors, nurses, and clergy. The majority of the women Fessler interviewed have never spoken of their experiences, and most have been haunted by grief and shame their entire adult lives. A searing and important look into a long-overlooked social history, The Girls Who Went Away is their story.
The Diary of a Murder
Lee Jackson - 2011
When his wife is murdered, everything points to his guilt, even a handwritten confession. But the police discover Jacob Jones's diary, which tells a different story. Is Jones' diary a confession?
Mr Briggs' Hat: A Sensational Account of Britain's First Railway Murder
Kate Colquhoun - 2011
The fascinating story of the first ever railway murder.
Doomed Queens
Kris Waldherr - 2008
What did they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold, cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. But in the end, they spent long nights in dark prison towers and were marched to the scaffold where they surrendered their heads to the executioner. And they are hardly alone in their undignified demises. Throughout history, royal women have had a distressing way of meeting bad ends—dying of starvation, being burned at the stake, or expiring in childbirth while trying desperately to produce an heir. They always had to be on their toes and all too often even devious plotting, miraculous pregnancies, and selling out their sisters was not enough to keep them from forcible consignment to religious orders. From Cleopatra (suicide by asp), to Princess Caroline (suspiciously poisoned on her coronation day), there's a gory downside to being blue-blooded when you lack a Y chromosome.Kris Waldherr's elegant little book is a chronicle of the trials and tribulations of queens across the ages, a quirky, funny, utterly macabre tribute to the dark side of female empowerment. Over the course of fifty irresistibly illustrated and too-brief lives, Doomed Queens charts centuries of regal backstabbing and intrigue. We meet well-known figures like Catherine of Aragon, whose happy marriage to Henry VIII ended prematurely when it became clear that she was a starter wife—the first of six. And we meet forgotten queens like Amalasuntha, the notoriously literate Ostrogoth princess who overreached politically and was strangled in her bath. While their ends were bleak, these queens did not die without purpose. Their unfortunate lives are colorful cautionary tales for today's would-be power brokers—a legacy of worldly and womanly wisdom gathered one spectacular regal ruin at a time.
The Oxford History of Medieval Europe
George Arthur Holmes - 1988
Now available in a compact, more convenient format, it offers the same text and many of the illustrations which first appeared in the widely acclaimed Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe. Written by expert scholars and based on the latest research, the book explores a period of profound diversity and change, focusing on all aspects of medieval history from the empires and kingdoms of Charlemagne and the Byzantines to the new nations which fought the Hundred Years War. The Oxford History of the Medieval World also examines such intriguing cultural subjects as the chivalric code of knights, popular festivals, and the proliferation of new art forms, and the catastrophic social effect of the Black Death. Authoritative and eminently readable, this book will entertain as much as it will educate.
Women and the American Experience
Nancy Woloch - 1984
The book's unique dual-chapter format pairs a narrative episode that vividly evokes a particular individual or event with a synthesis chapter that places each episode carefully within its broader historical context. This pairing of the concrete and specific with the general and historic creates the most compelling reading experience available in a survey of U.S. women's history.
Turkey - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
Charlotte McPherson - 2005
These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships.Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include* customs, values, and traditions* historical, religious, and political background* life at home* leisure, social, and cultural life* eating and drinking* do's, don'ts, and taboos* business practices* communication, spoken and unspoken"Culture Smart has come to the rescue of hapless travellers." Sunday Times Travel"... the perfect introduction to the weird, wonderful and downright odd quirks and customs of various countries." Global Travel"...full of fascinating-as well as common-sense-tips to help you avoid embarrassing faux pas." Observer"...as useful as they are entertaining." Easyjet Magazine"...offer glimpses into the psyche of a faraway world." New York Times
Waterloo: The French Perspective
Andrew W. Field - 2012
Even after 200 years of intensive research and the publication of hundreds of books and articles on the battle, the French perspective and many of the primary French sources are underrepresented in the written record. So it is high time this weakness in the literature – and in our understanding of the battle – was addressed, and that is the purpose of Andrew Field’s thought-provoking new study. He has tracked down over ninety firsthand French accounts, most of which have never been previously published in English, and he has combined them with accounts from the other participants in order to create a graphic new narrative of one of the world’s decisive battles. Virtually all of the hitherto unpublished testimony provides fascinating new detail on the battle and many of the accounts are vivid, revealing and exciting.
Across the Plains (Illustrated): A first hand account of pioneer life in the American West
Catherine Sager - 2015
Catherine Sager captured her family's trip across the American West in her journal. Her story describes the terrible journey which the early Oregon settlers made in order to settle and colonise a new territory with many hardships and heartaches along the way.This account today is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration. This edition has extra contextual information such as paintings, maps and facts to enhance the gripping narrative of Catherine Sager. The Sager Family Catehrine's father, Henry Sager was described as a restless one in her journal. Before 1844 he had moved his growing family three times. In April 1844 Henry and his family took part in the great westward migration and started their journey along the Oregon Trail. During their journey both he and his wife lost their lives and left their seven children orphaned. They were later adopted by Marcus Whitman and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, the children were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. Catherine Sager's account About 1860 Catherine, the oldest of the Sager girls, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Catherine's writing is clear, vivid and honest. She details pioneer life, the happy time she had with the Whitman's and the brutal massacre of the Whitman's by Indians. A survivor, she was also taken captive by the Indians. Her story shows how difficult life was for the early pioneers and gives a true insight into the early American West. What was the Oregon trail? The Oregon Trail is a 2,200-mile (3,500 km) historic east–west large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon.From the early to mid-1830s the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and businessmen and their families. Chapters Across the PlainsHome Life at the Whitman'sThe Waiilatpu MassacreIn Captivity
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
Christopher Ryan - 2010
Mainstream science--as well as religious and cultural institutions--has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.
The English Civil War: At First Hand
Tristram Hunt - 2002
As well as the most famous and lively documents, diaries and court cases of the period, the author has uncovered less known sources which added together offer a new angle on the years between 1637 and 1652 when Cromwell's Roundheads and Charles I's Cavaliers fought over Anglican reforms and Scottish rule.