EIGHT WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE: Pioneer Women in the Arts

In a useful but dutiful collection, Stux offers brief biographies of eight women who made recognized contributions to the arts during the 20th century. All of the women--dancer Maria Tallchief, photographer Margaret Bourke-White, singers Marian Anderson and Beverly Sills, pianist Nadia Boulanger, painter Mary Cassatt, architect Julia Morgan, and sculptor Louise Nevelson--are fairly well known; highlights of their achievements are noted, as well as rewards and honors received. Some of the biographies are quite interesting, but the coverage is uneven and the choice of subject is not always apparent: Stux does not make Sills's contributions to opera seem as pioneering as those of Cassatt or Morgan, the latter of whom left a legacy of more than 700 buildings she had designed in an era when women in the field of architecture were scarce.