Women's History

Documents the true stories of three pioneering women who defied Victorian-era boundaries to become the first women doctors, discussing how they banded together to support each other and advocate for women's health in a male-dominated field.

"When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Cornelia Fort was already in the air with a student. They barely made it back to ground that morning. When the U.S. Army Air Forces put out a call for women pilots to aid the war effort, Fort was one of just over 1,100 women from across the nation made it through the Army's rigorous selection process to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Not authorized to serve in combat, the WASP...

"The story of the National Organization for Women-its structures, trials, and revolutionary mission--told through the work of three extraordinary, little-known members"-- "In the summer of 1966, crammed into a D.C. hotel suite, twenty-eight women devised a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had called this renegade meeting from...

"High adventure and high ideals merge when a corps of intrepid female aviators battle to take part in the hugely popular air shows of the 1920s and 1930s. Ultimately, one of our heroines would win a race that earned her the right to be called America's best pilot"--

"Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as 'human computers' used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in...

"From the intimate perspective of three friends and neighbors in mid-nineteenth century Auburn, New York-the "agitators" of the title-acclaimed author Dorothy Wickenden tells the fascinating and crucially American stories of abolition, the Underground Railroad, the early women's rights movement, and the Civil War. Harriet Tubman-no-nonsense, funny, uncannily prescient, and strategically brilliant-was one of the most important conductors on the underground...

"In this shocking, hard-hitting expose in the tradition of Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich, the editorial director of Feministing.com, reveals how gender bias infects every level of medicine and healthcare today--leading to inadequate, inappropriate, and even dangerous treatment that threatens women's lives and well-being. Modern medicine is failing women. Half of all American women suffer from at least one chronic health condition--from autoimmune...

For too long the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the visionary adventures of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born, who spearheaded a national movement. In this essential reconsideration, Susan Ware uncovers a much broader and more diverse history waiting to be told. Why They Marched is the inspiring story of the dedicated women--and occasionally men--who carried the banner in communities across the nation,...

This annotated edition of the landmark inquiry into the women's role in society by one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers, Viriginia Woolf's classic A Room of One's Own features an introduction by English and Women's Studies professor Susan Gubar, perfect for critical analysis in classrooms and beyond. "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare...

The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and...