A well-written and solidly researched exploration of the 19th-century women’s rights movement.
A debut history book examines American women’s fight for the vote.
In this first installment of a series, Bennett covers the early decades of the women’s rights movement, concluding shortly after the Civil War. Drawing heavily on letters and published writings, the author shows the collaborative and often contentious nature of 19th-century activism and places it in the context of the present-day, ongoing struggle for equality. The narrative is organized by theme as much as by chronology, with each chapter presenting a question (“What is men’s role in a feminist movement?”; “How do we define our priorities?”) that is answered by the historical figures and events within it. While famous movement leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone all feature prominently, the volume skillfully tells the stories of lesser-known activists (Julia Ward Howe, Angelina Grimke, Prudence Crandall) and gives full attention to the efforts of black women advocating for both suffrage and equality (Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, Frances Watkins). Bennett weaves together the many quotations from historical letters, speeches, and newspapers (a full list of citations appears at the end) with a narration that is both casual and of the moment. Stewart stepped back from the cause because “she wasn’t volunteering to be her community’s personal therapist”; Catharine Beecher supported women speaking “almost never, hardly anywhere and not by any means that might possibly effect policy change”; women in one utopian community “organized conventions, gave speeches, and, um, did the dishes.” The result is a highly readable and engaging work of firmly constructed history that serves as an excellent introduction to the topic. Although the book does not break any new ground in historical research or analysis, it does an excellent job of synthesizing and presenting a wide range of sources and details, keeping the many historical figures distinct and offering a narrative that is easy for readers to follow.
A well-written and solidly researched exploration of the 19th-century women’s rights movement.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73382-390-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Brown Blackwell Books
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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