General History
A history of the wife by Marilyn Yalom
No turning back the history of feminism and the future of women by Estelle Freedman
Freedman combines a scholar’s meticulous research with a social critic’s keen eye. Sweeping in scope, searching in its analysis, global in its perspective, No turning back will stand as a defining text in one of the most important social movements of all time.
Women artists : an illustrated history by Nancy G. Heller
Women in the Middle Ages : the lives of real women in a vibrant age of transition by Frances & Joseph Gies
Headstrong : 52 women who changed science-- and the world by Rachel Swaby
Covering Nobel Prize winners and major innovators, as well as lesser-known but hugely significant scientists who influence our every day, Rachel Swaby's ... profiles span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one's ideas developed, from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they're best known
Nike is a goddess : the history of women in sports by Lucy Danziger
Feminist Theory
The second sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Woman's past and contemporary situation in Western culture is the focus of a detailed and uninhibited analysis of womanhood.
A vindication of the rights of woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
The feminine mystique by Betty Friedan
A fiftieth anniversary edition of the trailblazing women's reference shares anecdotes and interviews that were originally collected in the early 1960s to inspire women to develop their intellectual capabilities and reclaim lives beyond period conventions.
Feminist theory : from margin to center by bell hooks
This carefully argued and powerfully inspirational work is a comprehensive examination of the core issues of sexual politics, including political solidarity among women, men as partners in struggle, and the feminist movement to end violence. Always engaging and frequently provocative, hooks combines an accessible style with critical insight to offer a vision of feminism rooted in compassion, respect, and integrity.
The creation of patriarchy by Gerda Lerner
The book of the city of ladies by Christine de Pizan
Well-behaved women seldom make history by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Ulrich ranges over centuries and cultures, from the fifteenth-century writer Christine de Pizan, who imagined a world in which women achieved power and influence, to the writings of nineteenth-century suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and twentieth-century novelist Virginia Woolf. She contrasts Woolf's imagined story about Shakespeare's sister with biographies of actual women who were Shakespeare's contemporaries. She uses daybook illustrations to look at women who weren't trying to make history, but did. Throughout, she shows how feminist historians, by challenging traditional accounts of both men's and women's histories, have stimulated more vibrant and better-documented accounts of the past.
Women, race, & class by Angela Y. Davis
Ancient World
Hypatia of Alexandria by Maria Dzielska
The warrior queens by Antonia Fraser
The author looks at women who have led armies and empires. Boadicea, the Celtic chieftain who led a bloody uprising against Roman rule in the first century A.D. Cleopatra, who relied less on sexual guile than on political acumen. The grimly devout Isabella of Spain. The majestic and murderous Jinga Mbandi, who became the bane of Portuguese colonists in the seventeenth century Angola. Also are the modern "iron ladies": Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Meir.
Daughters of Isis : women of ancient Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley
The chalice and the blade : our history, our future by Riane Eisler
Women's work : the first 20,000 years : women, cloth, and society in early times by Elizabeth J. W. Barber
The Amazons : lives and legends of warrior women across the ancient world by Adrienne Mayor
This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China. Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons--Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China.
Africa
The female king of colonial Nigeria : Ahebi Ugbabe by Nwando Achebe
Mighty be our powers : how sisterhood, prayer, and sex changed a nation at war : a memoir by Leymah Gbowee
In a time of death and terror, Leymah Gbowee brought Liberia's women together--and together they led a nation to peace. As a young woman, Gbowee was broken by the Liberian civil war, a brutal conflict that tore apart her life and claimed the lives of countless relatives and friends. As a young mother trapped in a nightmare of domestic abuse, she found the courage to turn her bitterness into action, propelled by her realization that it is women who suffer most during conflicts--and that the power of women working together can create an unstoppable force. In 2003, the passionate and charismatic Gbowee helped organize and then led the Liberian Mass Action for Peace, a coalition of Christian and Muslim women who sat in public protest, confronting Liberia's ruthless president and rebel warlords, and even held a sex strike. With an army of women, Gbowee helped lead her nation to peace.
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.
The queen of Katwe : a story of life, chess, and one extraordinary girl's dream of becoming a grandmaster by Tim Crothers
The astonishing true story of Phiona Mutesi, a teenager from the slums of Kampala, Uganda, who, inspired by an unlikely mentor, a war refugee turned missionary, becomes an international chess champion.
African feminism : the politics of survival in sub-Saharan Africa by Gwendolyn Mikell
In praise of black women, volume 1 : ancient African queens by Simone Schwarz-Bart, et al.
In this translation of Hommage a la femme noire (1988), the authors pay tribute in essays and color images to a group victimized by "scholarly neglect and racist assumptions." Featured African women include 19th-20th century activists, authors, one of the first black fashion models, and others going beyond tradition
Australia
The tin ticket : the heroic journey of Australia's convict women by Deborah J. Swiss
Wise women of the dreamtime : aboriginal tales of the ancestral powers by K. Langloh Parker
Extending deep into the caverns of humanity's oldest memories, beyond 60,000 years of history and into the Dreamtime, this collection of Australian Aboriginal myths has been passed down through the generations by tribal storytellers. The myths were compiled at the turn of the century by K. Langloh Parker, one of the first Europeans to realize their significance and spiritual sophistication. Saved from drowning by Aboriginal friends when she was just a child, Parker subsequently gained unique access to Aboriginal women and to stories that had previously eluded anthropologists. In the stories, women tell of their own initiations and ceremonies, the origins and destiny of humanity, and the behavioral codes for society. Included are stories of child-rearing practices, young love in adversity, the dangers of invoking the spiritual powers, the importance of social sharing, the role of women in male conflicts, the dark feminine, and the transformational power of language. Wise Women of the dreamtime allows us to participate in the world's oldest stories and to begin a new dream of harmony between human society and nature.
Caribbean
Slave women in Caribbean society, 1650-1838 by Barbara Bush
Women in Caribbean history : the British-colonised territories by Verene Shepherd
Natural rebels : a social history of enslaved Black women in Barbados by Hilary McD. Beckles
East Asia
Women of Korea : a history from ancient times to 1945 by Yung-Chung Kim
In order to live : a North Korean girl's journey to freedom by Yeonmi Park
"Park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before [now] has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape"--Amazon.com.
Sky train : Tibetan women on the edge of history by Canyon Sam
Ama Adhe, the voice that remembers : the heroic story of a woman's fight to free Tibet by Ama Adhe
Wild swans : three daughters of China by Jung Chang
A Chinese woman chronicles the struggle of her grandmother, her mother, and herself to survive in a China torn apart by wars, invasions, revolution, and continuing upheaval, from 1907 to the present.
The secret history of the Mongol queens : how the daughters of Genghis Khan rescued his empire by Jack Weatherford
A history of the ruling women of the Mongol Empire, this work reveals their struggle to preserve a nation that shaped the world.
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek : China's eternal first lady by Laura Tyson Li
An international crusader who continued speaking out against Communism well into her nineties, she sparred with world leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt, and impressed Westerners and Chinese alike with her acumen, charm, and glamour. But she was also decried as a bottomless pit for Western aid, and despised in China for living in American-style splendor while ordinary citizens suffered her husband's brutal oppression. Based on extensive interviews, years of research in the United States and abroad, with access to previously classified CIA and diplomatic files, Madame Chiang Kai-skek is a tour de force portrait of one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century.
Manchu princess, Japanese spy : the story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the cross-dressing spy who commanded her own army by Phyllis Birnbaum
Daughters of the samurai : a journey from East to West and back by Janice Nimura
In 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan.
Eastern Europe
Catherine the Great : portrait of a woman by Robert K. Massie
This narrative biography tells the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into Empress of Russia by sheer determination. Possessing a brilliant mind and an insatiable curiosity as a young woman, she devoured the works of Enlightenment philosophers and, when she reached the throne, attempted to use their principles to guide her rule of the vast and backward Russian empire. Reaching the throne fired by Enlightenment philosophy and determined to become the embodiment of the "benevolent despot" idealized by Montesquieu, she found herself always contending with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian life, including serfdom. She persevered, and for thirty-four years the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands.
Night witches : the amazing story of Russia's women pilots in WWII by Bruce Myles
Thousands of roads : a memoir of a young woman's life in the Ukrainian underground during and after World War II by Maria Savchyn Pyskir
Latin America
Dreaming with the ancestors : black Seminole women in Texas and Mexico by Shirley Boteler Mock
Revolutionary women in postrevolutionary Mexico by Jocelyn H. Olcott
Isabel Orleans-Bragança : the Brazilian princess who freed the slaves by James McMurtry Longo
This is a biography of Isabel Orleans-Bragança, daughter of the last emperor of Brazil. Her story is told against the historic background of the role Isabel's own ancestors, especially royal women, played in the rise and fall of slavery. This is the story of one of the most famous, controversial, yet little known heroines in history.
The mapmaker's wife : a true tale of love, murder, and survival in the Amazon by Robert Whitaker
The year is 1735. A decade-long expedition to South America is launched by a team of French scientists racing to measure the circumference of the earth and to reveal the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery and knowledge. From this extraordinary journey arose an unlikely love between one scientist and a beautiful Peruvian noblewoman. Victims of a tangled web of international politics, Jean Godin and Isabel Gramesón's destiny would ultimately unfold in the Amazon’s unforgiving jungles, and it would be Isabel’s quest to reunite with Jean after a calamitous twenty-year separation that would capture the imagination of all of eighteenth-century Europe. A remarkable testament to human endurance, female resourcefulness, and enduring love, Isabel Gramesón's survival remains unprecedented in the annals of Amazon exploration.
Searching for life : the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the disappeared children of Argentina by Rita Arditti
Searching for Life traces the courageous plight of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of women who challenged the ruthless dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Acting as both detectives and human rights advocates in an effort to find and recover their grandchildren, the Grandmothers identified fifty-seven of an estimated 500 children who had been kidnapped or born in detention centers. The Grandmothers' work also led to the creation of the National Genetic Data Bank, the only bank of its kind in the world, and to Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the "right to identity," that is now incorporated in the new adoption legislation in Argentina.
Eva Perón by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz
The most revealing and comprehensive biography to date of the mysterious, fascinating woman know to all as Evita. Eva Perón continues, even decades after her death, to captivate millions with her legend. No other female political leader in the twentieth century - not Margaret Thatcher, not Indira Gandhi, not Golda Meier, not even Eleanor Roosevelt - is surrounded by more mythology and romantic lore than Eva Peron, the power-obsessed bride of Argentine dictator Juan Perón. Now In this best-selling biography, French and Argentine journalist Alicia Dujovne Ortiz examines the mythology that surrounds Eva Perón as she penetrates the complexities behind Perón's ever-lasting allure.
My invented country : a nostalgic journey through Chile by Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende's first memory of Chile is of a house she never knew. The "large old house" on the Calle Cueto, where her mother was born and which her grandfather evoked so frequently that Isabel felt as if she had lived there, became the protagonist of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. It appears again at the beginning of this playful, seductively compelling memoir and leads us into this gifted writer's world. Here are the almost mythic figures of a Chilean family - grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends - with whom readers of Allende's fiction will feel immediately at home. And here, too, is an unforgettable portrait of a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit. Although she claims to have been an outsider in her native land - "I never fit in anywhere, not into my family, my social class, or the religion fate bestowed on me" - Isabel Allende carries with her even today the mark of the politics, myth, and magic of her homeland.
Women & guerrilla movements : Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba by Karen Kampwirth
The country under my skin : a memoir of love and war by Gioconda Belli
Bananeras : women transforming the banana unions of Latin America by Dana Franks
I, Rigoberta Menchú : an Indian woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchú
This remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross injustice and hardship in her early life: her brother, father, and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. She learned Spanish and turned to catechistic work as an expression of political revolt as well as religious commitment. Menchú vividly conveys the traditional beliefs of her community and her personal response to feminist and socialist ideas. Above all, these pages are illuminated by the enduring courage and passionate sense of justice of an extraordinary woman.
Middle East
Princess : a true story of life behind the veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson
A Saudi woman discusses what life is like for women in her country, describing how women are sold into marriage to men five times their age, are treated as their husbands' slaves, and are often murdered for the slightest transgression.
Palestinian women of Gaza and the West Bank by Suha Sabbagh
Golda by Elinor Burkett
The first female head of state in the Western world and one of the most influential women in modern history, Golda Meir was one of the founders of the State of Israel, the architect of its socialist infrastructure, and its most tenacious international defender. Historian-journalist Burkett looks beyond Meir's well-known accomplishments to the complex motivations and ideals, personal victories and disappointments, of her charismatic public persona. Beginning with Meir's childhood in virulently anti-Semitic Russia and her family's subsequent relocation to the United States, Burkett places Meir within the framework of the American immigrant experience, the Holocaust, and the singlemindedness of a generation that carved a nation out of its own nightmares and dreams.
The underground girls of Kabul : in search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg
The underground girls of Kabul is anchored by vivid characters who bring this remarkable story to life: Azita, a female parliamentarian who sees no other choice but to turn her fourth daughter Mehran into a boy; Zahra, the tomboy teenager who struggles with puberty and refuses her parents' attempts to turn her back into a girl; Shukria, now a married mother of three after living for twenty years as a man; and Nader, who prays with Shahed, the undercover female police officer, as they both remain in male disguise as adults. At the heart of this emotional narrative is a new perspective on the extreme sacrifices of Afghan women and girls against the violent backdrop of America's longest war. Divided into four parts, the book follows those born as the unwanted sex in Afghanistan, but who live as the socially favored gender through childhood and puberty, only to later be forced into marriage and childbirth. The Underground Girls of Kabul charts their dramatic life cycles, while examining our own history and the parallels to subversive actions of people who live under oppression everywhere.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran: of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life and of the enormous toll repressive regimes exact on the individual spirit. Marjane's child's-eye-view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a stunning reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, through laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.
South Asia
Humanizing the sacred : Sisters in Islam and the struggle for gender justice in Malaysia by Azza Basarudin
The bandit queen of India : an Indian woman's amazing journey from peasant to international legend by Phoolan Devi
It's always possible : qne woman's transformation of India's prison system by Kiran Bedi
White saris and sweet mangoes : aging, gender, and body in North India by Sarah Lamb
This rich ethnography explores beliefs and practices surrounding aging in a rural Bengali village. Sarah Lamb focuses on how villagers' visions of aging are tied to the making and unmaking of gendered selves and social relations over a lifetime. Lamb uses a focus on age as a means not only to open up new ways of thinking about South Asian social life, but also to contribute to contemporary theories of gender, the body, and culture, which have been hampered, the book argues, by a static focus on youth. Lamb's own experiences in the village are an integral part of her book and ably convey the cultural particularities of rural Bengali life and Bengali notions of modernity. In exploring ideals of family life and the intricate interrelationships between and within generations, she enables us to understand how people in the village construct, and deconstruct, their lives. At the same time her study extends beyond India to contemporary attitudes about aging in the United States. This accessible and engaging book is about deeply human issues and will appeal not only to specialists in South Asian culture, but to anyone interested in families, aging, gender, religion, and the body.
Borders & boundaries : women in India's partition by Ritu Menon
The upstairs wife : an intimate history of Pakistan by Rafia Zakaria
A memoir of Karachi through the eyes of its women. The upstairs wife dissects the complex strands of Pakistani history, from the problematic legacies of colonialism to the beginnings of terrorist violence to increasing misogyny, interweaving them with the arc of Amina's life to reveal the personal costs behind ever-more restrictive religious edicts and cultural conventions. As Amina struggles to reconcile with a marriage and a life that had fallen below her expectations, we come to know the dreams and aspirations of the people of Karachi and the challenges of loving it not as an imagined city of Muslim fulfillment but as a real city of contradictions and challenges.
Undaunted : my struggle for freedom and survival in Burma by Zoya Phan
Zoya Phan escaped the Burmese army in her native jungle and a Thai refugee camp to become the spokesperson of the Free Burma movement
Wives, slaves, and concubines : a history of the female underclass in Dutch Asia by Eric Jones
South Pacific
Amazons of the Huk rebellion : gender, sex, and revolution in the Philippines by Vina A. Lanzona
From a native daughter : colonialism and sovereignty in Hawaiʻi by Haunani-Kay Trask
US/Canada
The myth of Seneca Falls : memory and the women's suffrage movement, 1848-1898 by Lisa Tetrault
The story of how the women's rights movement began at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 is a cherished American myth. The standard account credits founders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott with defining and then leading the campaign for women's suffrage. In her provocative new history, Lisa Tetrault demonstrates that Stanton, Anthony, and their peers gradually created and popularized this origins story during the second half of the nineteenth century in response to internal movement dynamics as well as the racial politics of memory after the Civil War.
Women on ice : the early years of women's ice hockey in western Canada by Wayne Norton
Odd girls and twilight lovers : a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America by Lillian Faderman
This compelling story of lesbian life in the twentieth century traces the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from the early years of the century--when career opportunities first enabled women to support themselves and spend their lives in "romantic friendships" with other women--to the diversity of today's life styles. Faderman uses journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous personal interviews with lesbians of all races, ages, and classes, to uncover and relate this often surprising narrative of lesbian life in America. Lesbian identity could emerge, Faderman maintains, only during that time, with the sexual freedom of the 1920s and the 1960s, as well as the social freedom made possible by World War II, the education of women, and the civil rights and women's movements. The term "lesbian" did not become current until the late nineteenth century, when European sexologists began to explore female same-sex loving. Where close relationships between women had once been accepted--even encouraged--the sexologists stigmatized same-sex pairing as deviant, but at the same time fostered a lesbian consciousness which was necessary before lesbian communities could be formed. This book tells how women who accepted the label "lesbian" altered the sexologists' definitions, creating identities and ideologies for themselves.
Identity by design : tradition, change, and celebration in Native women's dresses by the National Museum of the American Indian
This book presents an array of complete women's and girls' outfits dating from the 1830s to the present, including dresses, shawls, shoes, belts, bags, fans, and hair accessories. Also included is historical and contemporary background information on Native life and Native women and their dress. To accompany a major exhibit of the same name at the NMAI in March 2007.
Louise Pound : the 19th century iconoclast who forever changed America's views about women, academics, and sports by Marie Krohn
Good time girls of the Alaska-Yukon gold rush by Lael Morgan
In the days of our grandmothers : a reader in aboriginal women's history in Canada by Mary-Ellen Kelm and Lorna Townsend
The scarlet sisters : sex, suffrage, and scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra MacPherson
Describes the adventures of two sisters who tried to overcome the male-dominated social norms of the late nineteenth century and achieved a remarkable list of firsts, including the first woman-run brokerage house and the first woman to run for president.
Discarded legacy : politics and poetics in the life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911 by Melba Joyce Boyd
A critical history and interpretive literary analysis of the life and work of Frances E. W. Harper, writer, lecturer, educator, and activist in the abolitionist and feminist movements in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Rad American women A-Z by Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl
Profiled are 26 American women from the 18th through 21st centuries, who have made-or are still making--history as artists, writers, teachers, lawyers, or athletes. The women come from a variety of economic and ethnic backgrounds and many had to overcome extreme hardships. One woman represents each alphabetical letter beginning with Angela Davis, an activist, teacher, and writer, and concludes with Zora Neale Hurston, an anthropologist and writer.
America's women : four hundred years of dolls, drudges, helpmates, and heroines by Gail Collins
Traces the history of women in America, from the female settlers who vanished from Roanoke to the twenty-first century, noting the societal and political rules that influenced fashion, attitudes, education, sex, health, and work.
Walking in the sacred manner : healers, dreamers, and pipe carriers--medicine women of the Plains Indians by Mark St. Pierre
Walking in the sacred manner is an exploration of the myths and culture of the Plains Indians, for whom the everyday and the spiritual are intertwined and women play a strong and important role in the spiritual and religious life of the community. Based on extensive first-person interviews by an established expert on Plains Indian women, Walking in the sacred manner is a singular and authentic record of the participation of women in the sacred traditions of Northern Plains tribes, including Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, and Assiniboine. Through interviews with holy women and the families of women healers, Mark St. Pierre and Tilda Long Soldier paint a rich and varied portrait of a society and its traditions. Stereotypical images of the Native American drop away as the voices, dreams, and experiences of these women (both healers and healed) present insight into a culture about which little is known. It is a journey into the past, an exploration of the present, and a view full of hope for the future.
Out to work : a history of wage-earning women in the United States by Alice Kessler-Harris
This pioneering work traces the transformation of "women's work" into wage labor in the United States, identifying the social, economic, and ideological forces that have shaped our expectations of what women do. Basing her observations upon the personal experience of individual American women set against the backdrop of American society, Alice Kessler-Harris examines the effects of class, ethnic and racial patterns, changing perceptions of wage work for women, and the relationship between wage-earning and family roles.
Daughters of the earth : the lives and legends of American Indian women by Carolyn Niethammer
Examines the life of American Indian women in all their variety from Apache coming of age ceremonies to Algonkian marriage taboos, childhood games of the Crows and old age among Chinook.
Hannah Mary Tabbs and the disembodied torso : a tale of race, sex, and violence in America by Kali Nicole Gross
Revolutionary mothers : women in the struggle for America's independence by Carol Berkin
The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American, and Carol Berkin shows us that women played a vital role throughout the struggle. Berkin takes us into the ordinary moments of extraordinary lives. We see women boycotting British goods in the years before independence, writing propaganda that radicalized their neighbors, raising funds for the army, and helping finance the fledgling government. We see how they managed farms, plantations, and businesses while their men went into battle, and how they served as nurses and cooks in the army camps, risked their lives seeking personal freedom from slavery, and served as spies, saboteurs, and warriors. A recapturing of the experiences of ordinary women who lived in extraordinary times, and a fascinating addition to our understanding of the birth of our nation.
Pretty-shield, medicine woman of the Crows by Frank Linderman
Pretty-shield, the legendary medicine woman of the Crows, remembered what life was like on the Plains when the buffalo were still plentiful. A powerful healer who was forceful, astute, and compassionate, Pretty-shield experienced many changes as her formerly mobile people were forced to come to terms with reservation life in the late nineteenth century. Pretty-shield told her story to Frank Linderman through an interpreter and using sign language. The lives, responsibilities, and aspirations of Crow women are vividly brought to life in these pages as Pretty-shield recounts her life on the Plains of long ago. She speaks of the simple games and dolls of an Indian childhood and the work of the girls and women - setting up the lodges, dressing the skins, picking berries, digging roots, and cooking. Through her eyes we come to understand courtship, marriage, childbirth and the care of babies, medicine-dreams, the care of the sick, and other facets of Crow womanhood.
Ada Blackjack : a true story of survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven
It was controversial explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson who sent four young men and Ada Blackjack into the far North to colonize desolate, uninhabited Wrangel Island. Only two of the men had set foot in the Arctic before. They took with them six months' worth of supplies on Stefansson's theory that this would be enough to sustain them for a year while they lived off the land itself. But as winter set in, they were struck by hardship and tragedy. As months went by and they began to starve, they were forced to ration their few remaining provisions. When three of the men made a desperate attempt to seek help, Ada was left to care for the fourth, who was too sick to travel. Soon after, she found herself totally alone. Upon Ada's miraculous return after two years on the island, the international press heralded her as the female Robinson Crusoe. Journalists hunted her down, but she refused to talk to anyone about her harrowing experiences. Only on one occasion -- after being accused of a horrible crime she did not commit -- did she speak up for herself. All the while, she was tricked and exploited by those who should have been her champions. Niven narrates this remarkable true story, taking full advantage of a wealth of primary sources, including Ada Blackjack's never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished journals of other major characters, and interviews with Ada's second son. Filled with exciting adventure and fascinating history -- as well as extraordinary photographs -- Ada Blackjack is a gripping and ultimately inspiring tale of a woman who survived a terrible time in the wild only to face a different but equally trying ordeal back in civilization.
A jury of her peers : American women writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx by Elaine Showalter
This work is a history of American women writers from 1650-2000. In this narrative spanning more than 400 years and introducing more than 250 female writers, both famous and little known, the author shows how these writers were connected to one another and to their times. The author believes that it is important to integrate the contributions of women into the American literary heritage, making the case for the unfairly overlooked and putting the overrated in their place. In this work she gives readers the opportunity to rediscover long-lost great writers and to return to familiar titles with deeper appreciation.
Far more terrible for women : personal accounts of women in slavery, edited by Patrick N. Minges
The belles of New England : the women of the textile mills and the families whose wealth they wove by William Moran
Open wide the freedom gates : a memoir by Dorothy Height
[The author] marched at major civil rights rallies, sat through tense White House meetings, and witnessed every significant victory in the struggle for racial equality. Yet as the sole woman among powerful, charismatic men, and as someone whose personal ambition was always secondary to her passion for her cause, she has received little mainstream recognition ... In [this] memoir, [she] reflects on a life of service and leadership.
Western Europe
Lieutenant nun : memoir of a Basque transvestite in the New World by Catalina De Erauso
The "autobiographical" account of a Basque woman who fled convent life in Spain; made her way to the Indies disguised as a page boy; and spent 22 years as a soldier in the colonies, mostly in Chile and the Perus, in early 17th century. Traditionally rejected as a work of fiction, Catalina de Erauso's story has been verified - to the extent that verification is possible - as well as authenticated by recent scholarship.
Ravensbrück : life and death in Hitler's concentration camp for women by Sarah Helm
Traces the sobering history of World War II's largest female concentration camp, revealing the torturous experiences and deaths of thousands of women prisoners of more than twenty nationalities.
The winter queen : Elizabeth of Bohemia by Carola Oman
The far traveler : voyages of a Viking woman by Nancy Marie Brown
Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed past the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, few believed that the details of Gudrid's story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scientists discovered what may have been this pioneering woman's last house, buried under a hay field in Iceland, just where the sagas suggested it could be. Joining scientists with cutting-edge technology and the latest archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid's steps on land and in the sagas, author Brown reconstructs a life that spanned--and expanded--the bounds of the then-known world
Queen of fashion : what Marie Antoinette wore to the revolution by Caroline Weber
Marie Antoinette has always stood as an icon of supreme style, but surprisingly none of her biographers have paid sustained attention to her clothes. Here, 18th-century specialist Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of her tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour. As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt provocative, "unqueenly" outfits that, ironically, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion--the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs--was also her undoing.
Sophie Scholl and the White Rose by Annette Dumbach & Jud Newborn
The pope's daughter : the extraordinary life of Felice della Rovere by Caroline Murphy
The illegitimate daughter of Pope Julius II, Felice della Rovere became one of the most powerful and accomplished women of the Italian Renaissance. Using a wide variety of sources, including Felice's personal correspondence, as well as diaries, account books, and chronicles of Renaissance Rome, Murphy skillfully weaves a compelling portrait of this remarkable woman. Felice della Rovere was to witness Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel, watch her father Pope Julius II lay the foundation stone for the new Saint Peter's, and see herself immortalized by Raphael in his Vatican frescos. With her marriage to Gian Giordano Orsini - arranged, though not attended, by her father the Pope - she came to possess great wealth and power, assets which she turned to her advantage. While her father lived, Felice exercised much influence in the affairs of Rome - even negotiating for peace with the Queen of France - and after his death, Felice persevered, making allies of the cardinals and clerics of St. Peter's and maintaining her control of the Orsini land through tenacity, ingenuity, and carefully cultivated political savvy. She survived the Sack of Rome in 1527, but her greatest enemy proved to be her own stepson Napoleone. The rivalry between him and her son Girolamo had a sudden and violent end, and brought her perilously close to losing her life.
Isabella : the warrior queen by Kirstin Downey
Drawing on new scholarship, Downey presents a biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus' journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history.
She-wolves : the women who ruled England before Elizabeth by Helen Castor
When Edward VI died in 1553, the extraordinary fact was that there was no one left to claim the title of king of England. For the first time, England would have a reigning queen, but the question was which one: Katherine of Aragon's daughter, Mary; Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth; or one of their cousins, Lady Jane Grey or Mary, Queen of Scots. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edward's death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror, came tantalizingly close to securing the crown for herself. And between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries three more exceptional women -- Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou -- discovered how much was possible if presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly, and just how quickly they might be vilified as "she-wolves" for their pains. The stories of these women, told here in all their vivid detail, expose the paradox that female heirs to the Tudor throne had no choice but to negotiate. Man was the head of woman, and the king was the head of all. How, then, could royal power lie in female hands?