Women Who Made a Difference
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M Train begins in the Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and as it was, and writes in her notebook. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith’s life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith.
Legendary performer Grace Jones offers a revealing account of her spectacular career and turbulent life, charting the development of a persona that has made her one of the world’s most recognizable artists. Featuring sixteen pages of stunning full-color photographs, many from her own personal archive, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs follows this creative nomad as she rejects her strict religious upbringing in Jamaica; conquers New York, Paris, and the 1980s; answers to no-one; and lives to fight again and again.
A true original, with a gift for making the biggest stars in Hollywood listen to hard truths about their careers and personal lives, Sue Mengers became a force to be reckoned with. Irrepressible and loaded with chutzpah, she became a driving force of Creative Management Associates (which later became ICM) handling the era’s preeminent stars. Biographer Brian Kellow spins an irresistible tale, exhaustively researched and filled with anecdotes about more than two hundred show-business luminaries.
Surveying history, literature, philosophy, religion, and pop culture, the authors demonstrate how women were able to co-opt the public face of friendship throughout the years. Chronicling shifting attitudes toward friendship, both female and male throughout time, they reveal how the concept of female friendship has been inextricably linked to the larger social and cultural movements that have defined human history. Yalom and Brown illuminate the story of friendship between women: the literary salon as the original book club, the emergence of female professions, the advent of women’s sports, and more.
The relationship between Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg transcends party, religion, and culture. Strengthened by each other’s presence, these judges, the first and second women to serve on the highest court in the land, have transformed the Constitution and America itself, making it a more equal place for all women. This dual biography includes revealing stories of how these trailblazers fought for their own recognition in a male-dominated profession. It also makes clear how these two justices have shaped the legal framework of many issues crucial to women’s lives.
Mary McGrory was a trailblazing columnist who achieved national syndication and reported from the front lines of American politics for five decades. From her first assignment reporting on the Army–McCarthy hearings to her Pulitzer-winning coverage of Watergate and controversial observations of President Bush after September 11, McGrory humanized the players on the great national stage while establishing herself as a uniquely influential voice. As the red-hot center of the Beltway in a time when the newsrooms were dominated by men, McGrory makes for a powerfully engrossing subject.
The Lost Landscape is Joyce Carol Oates’ vivid chronicle of her childhood in rural New York State. From memories of her relatives, to her earliest experiences with death, this is a powerful evocation of the romance of childhood, and its influence on the woman and the writer she would become. In this candid account, Oates explores the world through the eyes of her younger self, a girl eager to tell stories about the world and the people she meets. Oates renders her memories and emotions with precision, transporting us to the lost landscape of her youth.
In 1906, at age fifteen, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn mounted a soapbox in Times Square to denounce capitalism and proclaim a new era for women’s freedom. Quickly recognized as an outstanding public speaker and formidable organizer, she devoted her life to creating a socialist America, "free from poverty, exploitation, greed and injustice." Flynn became the most important female leader of the Industrial Workers of the World and of the American Communist Party, fighting tirelessly for workers’ rights to organize and to express dissenting ideas.
Home Fires, a fascinating history of the Women’s Institute during WWII (when its members included the future Queen Elizabeth II along with her mother and grandmother), provides the true story behind the PBS Masterpiece series. Through archival material and interviews with current and former Women’s Institute members, Home Fires gives us an intimate look at life on the home front during WWII.
Young women, still fighting for equality today, need to know how the movement began years ago, with such basics as the rights to vote, to birth control, and to equal employment. Historian Jules Archer offers fascinating biographies of Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, and Betty Friedan, including backgrounds of the political organizations they worked for and against. At great personal risk, these women dared to defy convention for the cause of sexual and gender equality.
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