Women's History Month: Books

In Ada's Algorithm, James Essinger makes the case that the computer age could have started two centuries ago if Lovelace's contemporaries had recognized her research and fully grasped its implications. Lovelace wrote what is today considered the world's first computer program--despite opposition that the principles of science were "beyond the strength of a woman's physical power of application." Based on ten years of research and filled with fascinating characters and observations of the period, not to mention numerous illustrations, Essinger tells Ada's fascinating story in unprecedented detail to absorbing and inspiring effect.

If you loved Hidden Figures or The Rise of the Rocket Girls, you'll love Claire Evans' breakthrough book on the women who brought you the internet--written out of history, until now. This is a radically important, timely work, says Miranda July, filmmaker and author of The First Bad Man.

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.

A groundbreaking book--two decades in the works--that tells the story of how a brilliant writer-turned-activist, granddaughter of a mulatto slave, and the first lady of the United States, whose ancestry gave her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, forged an enduring friendship that changed each of their lives and helped to alter the course of race and racism in America.

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory history essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America. Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.

For fans of Hidden Figures, comes the incredible true story of the women heroes who were exposed to radium in factories across the U.S. in the early 20th century, and their brave and groundbreaking battle to strengthen workers' rights, even as the fatal poison claimed their own lives...

In Amelia, bestselling authors Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon review the existing theories about what happened when the world's most revered aviatrix disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. They provide new insights into a mystery that has confounded searchers for sixty years. Much more than an investigation of Amelia's disappearance, this intimate biography describes a compelling young woman who rejected society's traditional female role to pursue an exciting, path-breaking career, and who overcame the stigma such independence brought her. Amelia includes more than thirty photographs, some never before published. It is a vivid portrait of a fascinating person who had a personality so captivating, who was so glad to be alive and so dedicated to her chosen field that her reputation as a loyal, entertaining, and inspirational women endures to this day.

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America--the first African American to serve in that role--she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments.

One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism--from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington--Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was one of the foremost crusaders against black oppression. This engaging memoir tells of her private life as mother of a growing family as well as her public activities as teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight against attitudes and laws oppressing blacks.

The first volume in the life of America's greatest First Lady, "a woman who changed the lives of millions." This volume covers ER's family and birth, her childhood, education, and marriage, and ends with FDR's election to the Presidency--the years of ER's youth and coming of age.

The incredible life story of Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, and her amazing journey from isolation to the world stage. Haben grew up spending summers with her family in the enchanting Eritrean city of Asmara. There, she discovered courage as she faced off against a bull she couldn't see, and found in herself an abiding strength as she absorbed her parents' harrowing experiences during Eritrea's thirty-year war with Ethiopia. Warm, funny, thoughtful, and uplifting, this captivating memoir is a testament to one woman's determination to find the keys to connection.

Every schoolchild knows of Harriet Tubman's heroic escape and resistance to slavery. But few readers are aware that Tubman went on to be a scout, a spy, and a nurse for the Union Army, because there has never before been a serious biography for an adult audience of this important woman. This is that long overdue historical work, written by an acclaimed historian of the antebellum era and the Civil War. With impeccable scholarship that draws on newly available sources and research into the daily lives of slaves, HARRIET TUBMAN is an enduring work on one of the most important figures in American history.

One of the only surviving female slave narratives from the twentieth century, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiographical account written by Harriet Jacobs. The narrative documents the extreme adversity she overcame before she eventually achieved her freedom. Under the pseudonym "Linda Brent," Jacobs recounts within the book the horrific injustices she encountered: sexual abuse, extreme cruelty, exploitation, being denied motherhood when her children are sold to another slave owner. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet's agonizing descriptions are indicative of what many other enslaved African American women suffered through during this tragic time in American history.

Lead from the Outside is a necessary guide to harnessing the strengths of being an outsider by Stacey Abrams, one of the most prominent black female politicians in the U.S. In Lead from the Outside, Stacey Abrams argues that knowing your own passion is the key to success, regardless of the scale or target. Stacey uses her experience and hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, while offering personal stories that illuminate practical strategies.

The life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote the classic "Frankenstein" when she was only 18-years-old, goes beyond the story of how her novel was written and explores the real and tragic life of a writer who was flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous.

The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Through her still-astonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.

In this collection Justice Ginsburg discusses gender equality, the workings of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US Constitution. This book's sampling is selected by Justice Ginsburg and her authorized biographers Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams, who introduce each chapter and provide biographical context and quotes gleaned from hundreds of interviews they have conducted.

An intimate and rousing memoir by progressive trailblazer Ilhan Omar--the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women, elected to Congress. This is What America Looks Like is both the inspiring coming of age story of a refugee and a multidimensional tale of the hopes and aspirations, disappointments and failures, successes, sacrifices and surprises, of a devoted public servant with unshakable faith in the promise of America.

From Vice President Kamala Harris, one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country. In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth.

In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."

An engaging history of women entrepreneurs in America from the colonial era to the end of the twentieth century. Some ran businesses in industries dominated by men, such as iron and aircraft production, while others built businesses that marketed specifically to women, in industries such as beauty, fashion, and food. Despite facing gender discrimination and the burdens of work and family, these women entrepreneurs understood the value of a good idea, were willing to take a risk, and believed in the possibility of the American dream of success.

This is an easy-to-use guide featuring the life and work of the greatest women painters of Western art - from the 15th century to 2002. Legendary women painters of each key historical movement are included, such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keefe, Gwen John, Frida Kahlo and more.

The Natural Superiority of Women stands as one of the original feminist arguments against biological determinism. An iconoclast, Montagu wielded his encyclopedic knowledge of physical anthropology in critique of the conventional wisdom of women as the 'weaker sex,' showing how women's biological, genetic, and physical makeup made her not only man's equal, but his superior.

These essays examine the tactics women have employed in self-representation and the feminist rhetoric that results. Contributors examine both past and present practices, highlighting correspondences between them and the ways those practices have varied, succeeded, or failed.

With coverage of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, nearly half the volume is now devoted to the remarkable period from 1960 to the present, when women artists emerged as the most dynamic force in contemporary art.

In the late 1960s, when the current women's movement was beginning to gain its first real momentum, academic women, long subjected to institutionalized subordination, became suddenly and acutely aware of their own inferior status--not only in the hierarchy of academic employment, but also in the hierarchy of recognized intellectual achievement.

Women Who Opt Out is a collection of original essays by the leading scholars in the field of work and family research, which takes a multi-disciplinary approach in questioning the basic thesis of "the opt-out revolution." The contributors illustrate that the desire to balance both work and family demands continues to be a point of unresolved concern for families and employers alike and women's equity within the workforce still falls behind.

Rosalyn Terborg-Penn draws from original documents to take a comprehensive look at the African American women who fought for the right to vote. She analyzes the women's own stories, and examines why they joined and how they participated in the U.S. women's suffrage movement. Terborg-Penn shows how every political and racial effort to keep African American women disfranchised met with their active resistance until black women finally achieved full citizenship.

Far from the stereotype of a uniform body of women chaining themselves to railings, the early feminist movement was riven by virulent arguments over women's role in society, the balance to be struck between self-fulfillment and their duties to family and children, and their relationship with men. Melanie Phillips' brilliant book tells the story of the fight for women's suffrage in a way which sets the high drama of those events in the context of the moral and intellectual ferment that characterized it.

Chicago-based writer, artist, and civil rights attorney Rowland covers the period from the 1600's to the early 1900s in the first section, then examines developments in the 20th century in a long second section. Final sections look at the politics of female adolescence and violence and women.

Chronicles the women's suffrage movement from its official inception at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

A potent and electrifying critique of today's feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism. Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women.

Companion book to the PBS American Experience documentary by the same name, this anthology is the most comprehensive collection of writings -- contemporary and historical -- on the woman suffrage movement in America. It includes essays by the most prominent contemporary historians, many who challenge widely accepted theories and illustrate the diversity and complexity of the fight for the 19th Amendment.

This Bridge Called My Back is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, the complex confluence of identities--race, class, gender, and sexuality--systemic to women of color oppression and liberation.

Women's Human Rights: Seeking Gender Justice in a Globalizing Age explores the emergence of transnational, UN-oriented, feminist advocacy for women's human rights, especially over the past three decades. It identifies the main feminist influences that have shaped the movement liberal, radical, third world and cosmopolitan and exposes how the Western, legalist, state-centric, and liberal biases of mainstream human rights discourse impede the realization of human rights in women's lives everywhere.

This reference source examines 15 controversial issues concerning women's rights in the United States. A historical overview introduces each issue, followed by the presentation of primary documents that illustrate the various positions women and men have taken in support of or opposition to the issue at hand

The 125 historical documents in this unique volume bring to life the triumphs, disappointments, and enduring contributions of women's struggle for equal rights in America. This work also reveals often-surprising sources of opposition, such as Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Grace Marks is serving a life sentence for her part in the vicious murders of Thomas Kinnear, a wealthy landowner, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Grace herself now claims to have no memory of the murders. Simon Jordan, a young New England doctor in the field of mental health and an expert on amnesia, has been engaged to find out the truth. To do so, he must awaken that part of Grace's mind that lies dormant, using the practices of the science he has such great faith in.

1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realize they may be harboring a murderer among their number. The tension escalates as the survivors realize the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again… and again...

Kate Chopin was one of the most individual and adventurous of nineteenth-century American writers, whose fiction explored new and often startling territory. When her most famous story, The Awakening, was first published in 1899, it stunned readers with its frank portrayal of the inner word of Edna Pontellier, and its daring criticisms of the limits of marriage and motherhood. The subtle beauty of her writing was contrasted with her unwomanly and sordid subject-matter: Edna's rejection of her domestic role, and her passionate quest for spiritual, sexual, and artistic freedom.

A realistic and emotional novel about a woman battling mental illness and societal pressures written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: young, brilliant, beautiful, and enormously talented, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's neurosis becomes completely understandable and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such thorough exploration of the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche - and the profound collective loneliness that modern society has yet to find a solution for - is an extraordinary accomplishment, and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is persistantly haunted by the ghost of her dead baby girl.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.

In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish--and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation of this secret unleashes an urgent need among the women to reach back and remember...

The visionary author's masterpiece pulls us--along with her Black female hero--through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Largely based on the author's own childhood, Little Women is a timeless tale of the four young March sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Literary-minded tomboy Jo develops a fast friendship with the boy next door, and pretty Meg, the eldest, finds romance; frail and affectionate Beth fills the house with music, and Amy, the youngest, seeks beauty with all the longing of an artist's soul. Although poor in material wealth, the family possesses an abundance of love, friendship, and imaginative gifts that captivate readers time and again.

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Betty Smith has captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life and has created a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as deeply resonant moments of universal experience.

Jean Rhys ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

The intriguing story of Eleanor Roosevelt traces the life of the former First Lady from her early childhood through the tumultuous years in the White House to her active role in the founding of the United Nations after World War II.

For the first twenty-eight years of her life. Harriet Tubman lived as a slave on a southern plantation. Finally, with the help of a Quaker woman, she was able to escape to Philadelphia by way of the Underground Railroad. After her escape, Harriet began her quest to help free other slaves. Over a ten-year period she led more than three hundred people through the Underground Railroad. In Go Free or Die, young readers will learn about this courageous woman who refused to be a slave and who fought for freedom for everyone.

Traces the life of the pilot who became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and mysteriously disappeared in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world.

When Mary Lennox is sent from India to the moors of England to live with her uncle after losing her parents, not only does she discover a secret garden, but she also discovers the true meaning of family, friendship, and perseverance.

Whether privileged ladies or former slaves, women in the North and South worked as nurses, spies, and volunteers in aid societies; they even fought battles posing as male soldiers. These indomitable women broke taboos, developed strategies to help feed and clothe the soldiers, cared for the wounded, and took over dangerous jobs on the homefront. The impact their presence made will engross and enlighten the reader.

Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea,  but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless  youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.