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Women's History Month Nonfiction Titles |
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Eve : how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution
by Cat Bohannon
Covering the past 200 million tears to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex, this groundbreaking account of the real origin of our species—and a sweeping revision of human history—will completely change what you think you know about evolution. Illustrations.
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Fearless women : feminist patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncâe
by Elizabeth Cobbs
"Cobbs traces the long history of American feminism, dating back to the Revolution, when the founding principle of equality became a battering ram against hierarchy. She tells this story through the public and private lives of 16 women who pushed the boundaries of their times and insisted on their right to control their bodies and their lives"
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Formidable : American women and the fight for equality: 1920-2020
by Elisabeth Griffith
In this riveting narrative, an activist and academic, integrating the fight by white and Black women to achieve quality, provides a sweeping, century-long perspective and an expansive cast of change agents, showing how the diversity of the women's movement mirrors America. Illustrations.
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Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
by Sophie Gilbert
What happened to feminism in the twenty-first century? This question feels increasingly urgent in a moment of cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement's power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress. Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and riot grrrl feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization. Mining the darker side of nostalgia, Gilbert trains her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more. What she recounts is harrowing, from the leering gaze of the paparazzi to the gleeful cruelty of early reality TV and a burgeoning internet culture vicious toward women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren't.
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Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA
by Amy Erdman Farrell
When eight-year-old Amy Erdman Farrell moved with her family to Akron, Ohio, in 1972, she found herself adrift in a sea of taunting boys and mean girls. Shy by nature, she dreaded her long, unhappy days at school. But a few years later, Farrell found an escape from bullying, the promise of sisterhood, a rising sense of confidence, adventure, and--best of all--lifelong friendship when she joined a Girl Scout troop. Decades later, award-winning author Farrell returns to those formative experiences to explore the complicated and surprising history of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Drawing from extensive archival research, visits to iconic Girl Scout sites around the world, and vivid personal reflections, Farrell uncovers the Girl Scouts intricate history, revealing how the organization has shaped the lives of more than 50 million girls and women since its founding in 1912.
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Mother tongue : the surprising history of women's words
by Jennifer Anne Nuttall
"So many of the words that we use to chronicle women's lives feel awkward or alien. Medical terms are scrupulously accurate but antiseptic. Slang and obscenities have shock value, yet they perpetuate taboos. Where are the plain, honest words for women's daily lives? Mother Tongue is a historical investigation of feminist language and thought, from the dawn of Old English to the present day. Dr. Jenni Nuttall guides readers through the evolution of words that we have used to describe female bodies, menstruation, women's sexuality, the consequences of male violence, childbirth, women's paid and unpaid work, and gender.
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Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
by Julia Ioffe
In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow, only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up--doctors, engineers, scientists--had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values? In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin's lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, wife of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate--
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On this day she : putting women back into history one day at a time
by Jo Bell
"A fascinating page-a-day collection profiling extraordinary women of all races, eras, and nationalities. Our past is full of influential women. Whether politicians, troublemakers, explorers, artists, and even the odd murderer, women have shaped society around the globe. But too often, these women have been unfairly confined to the margins of history. On This Day She: Putting Women Back into History One Day at a Time corrects this imbalance.
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The once and future sex : going medieval on women's roles in society
by Eleanor Janega
"A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women's beauty, sexuality, and behavior. What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love, and be? In this vibrant, high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged the ancient world and modern society, to unfurl its suppositions about women and reveal what's shifted over time-and what hasn't. In The Once and Future Sex, Janega unravels the restricting expectations on medieval women and the ones on women today. She boldly questions why, if our ideas of women have changed drastically over time, we cannot reimagine them now to create a more equitable future"
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Real Clothes, Real Lives : 200 Years of What Women Wore
by Kiki Smith
Real Clothes, Real Lives highlights over 300 garments and accessories from the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection. This unique survey honors countless lives, tracing through the lens of dress how women's roles have changed over the decades. Each piece holds colorful stories about the woman who wore it, the one who made or bought it, and her context in place and time.
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Sensational : the hidden history of America's "girl stunt reporters"
by Kim Todd
The award-winning author of Tinkering with Eden presents a vivid social history of the Gilded Age that examines the stories of women journalists who went undercover to champion women's rights and expose corruption and abuse in America. 50,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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Stuff mom never told you : the feminist past, present, and future
by Anney Reese
The creators of the popular iHeart podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You explore the history, strategy and emotion that went into several milestones and emergent issues of the recent feminist movement, showing the true breadth of what feminism can stand for, what it can achieve and whom it can empower. Illustrations.
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Valiant women : the extraordinary American servicewomen who helped win World War II
by Lena S. Andrews
In this groundbreaking new history of the role of American women in World War II, a top military analyst for the CIA presents the inspiring, shocking and heartbreaking stories of these servicewomen that reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of combat in the war and illustrates important realities about modern warfighting. Illustrations.
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Wild girls : how the outdoors shaped the women who challenged a nation
by Tiya Miles
In this beautiful, meditative work, an award-winning historian profiles trailblazing women of all races in the 19th and 20th centuries who acted on their confidence in the natural world, bringing new context to misunderstood icons and underappreciated figures. Illustrations.
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The women of NOW : how feminists built an organization that transformed America
by Katherine Turk
A noted historian chronicles the growth and influence of NOW, the National Organization of Women, which was radical in its time, through three relatively unknown core members who helped flood the nation with feminism, shift American culture and politics, and clash with conservative forces. 50,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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The Women's Revolution: How We Changed Your Life
by Muriel Fox
A rare first-person account of the women's movement A comprehensive, indexed memoir about the Second Wave women's movement by the cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Muriel Fox offers rare, firsthand stories of 29 women and one man, including Betty Freidan, but also many who have not previously been recognized for their contributions. As NOW's public relations director, Fox orchestrated nationwide outreach. She was NOW's vice president, then chair of the board, then chaired the National Advisory Committee. As Betty Friedan's main lieutenant and director of operations, Fox drafted numerous letters sent by NOW under Friedan's signature to government officials demanding faster action to reduce sex discrimination, including a letter that helped persuade President Lyndon Johnson to add gender to Affirmative Action and open opportunities for millions of women. Unlike books relying on secondary sources, Fox's memoir is built mainly from her own Feminism Files containing hundreds of letters, clippings, notes, and photographs that she archived.
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Young and restless : the girls who sparked America's revolutions
by Mattie Kahn
Recounting one of the most foundational and underappreciated forces in moments of American revolution—teenage girls—an award-winning writer uncovers how they have leveraged their unique strengths to organize and lay serious political groundwork for movements that often sidelined them.
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