A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF WOMEN IN AMERICA

A Pictorial History with too few pictures to have much visual impact and, perhaps, too much text. Warren strives for a panoramic view of American womanhood and ends up with little more than a parade of notables--from ""the New World's first woman celebrity"" Pocahontas to a phalanx of 20th century newsmakers in the arts, politics and the feminist movement. Some attention is paid to the changing social position of women over the years, but minority groups--slaves, immigrants, Indians--are hardly represented except, once again, by their most prominent members. And the scope is simply too vast to take account of, say, divisions within the suffragist movement, or to include very much primary source material. Warren includes some portraits which challenge the glamorized Hollywood view of such women as ""Dolley"" Madison and Belle Boyd and some (but not nearly enough) documentary records of women at work and on the march. An overview for browsers.