A fresh, well-researched perspective on women’s history.
Historical study of the complexities of feminism in America.
Cobbs, a professor of American history and author of The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers, highlights the lives of women, from the 18th century to the present, whom she calls “feminist patriots,” ascribing the term feminist broadly, to “people who fought for their own rights or those of others,” and patriot to mean someone “who has a love of country and a willingness to defend national values.” As she acknowledges, “some feminists were racists, just as some civil rights activists were sexists.” Her selections include the predictable—Susan B. Anthony, civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell, labor reformer Frances Perkins—and the surprising: Equal Rights Amendment opponent Phyllis Schlafly, for one, who, Cobbs concedes, “can be seen as a classic anti-feminist feminist.” In each chapter, organized chronologically, the author contrasts one woman who serves as “the face of feminism” with another who “experienced a dilemma to which reformers did not yet have solutions.” She also points out that “some of these problems exist to this day.” She pairs the outspoken Abigail Adams, for example, with her contemporary, Abigail Bailey, whose husband abused her, sexually preyed on servants, and raped their daughter. Bailey had little legal recourse to sue for divorce, but she eventually successfully defended herself and her children. Cobbs looks at abolitionist Angelina Grimké and Harriet Jacobs, a slave, who both responded to their society’s systemic violence. Mexican American activist Martha Cotera, who promoted the recognition of sexism, joins Yvonne Swan, who fought to claim self-defense for killing a rapist. Cobbs draws on memoirs to portray many of her lesser-known subjects, such as Muriel Siebert, who rose from being an underpaid financial analyst to becoming the first woman with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The right to compete, learn, lobby, vote, earn equal pay, obtain equal legal protection, and be assured of physical safety are among the issues the author examines through the lives of her brave protagonists.
A fresh, well-researched perspective on women’s history.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780674258488
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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