An unusually diverse mix of top-down and bottom-up views of the fight for votes for women.
Rotten eggs, jail terms, and ridicule were among the hazards faced by suffragists, according to a compendium from the general editor of American National Biography.
Amid the flood of books marking the centennial of women’s suffrage, this anthology stands out for its scope and authority. In a season sure to bring paeans to movement foremothers, Ware deromanticizes their fight by gathering 90 pro-, anti-, or proto-suffrage documents—articles, speeches, pamphlets, and other nonfiction along with a few poems and humorous sketches and a play by Charlotte Perkins Gilman—all written or delivered between 1776 and the months after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many entries reveal tactical or ideological conflicts among leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Lucy Stone, none more fateful than whether to try to enfranchise women state by state or push for the federal law that became the 19th Amendment. Other pieces give voice to the rank and file, to men, and to American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and Chinese immigrants. With endearing good cheer, the Massachusetts suffragist Florence Luscomb describes traveling around her state by trolley, toting a 6-foot banner inscribed “Votes for Women,” only to arrive in a country town and end up “talking to the air, three assorted dogs, six kids, and the two loafers in front of the grocery store just over the way.” The most startling item comes from the Mississippi suffragist Belle Kearney, who—with no apparent shame—urged Southerners to support women’s suffrage because it would ensure “immediate and durable white supremacy,” given that educated white female voters would outnumber “all the illiterate voters, white and black, native and foreign—combined.” Some entries have more historical than literary or human interest, but this is essential for libraries and a go-to book for anyone seriously interested in women’s suffrage in America.
An unusually diverse mix of top-down and bottom-up views of the fight for votes for women.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59853-664-5
Page Count: 780
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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