Women

A spirited and poignant family love story, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt reveals how an icon of rugged American masculinity was profoundly shaped by the women in his life, especially his mother, sisters, and wives....

The #1 New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her magnum opus—a landmark work of feminist nonfiction that radically redefines our understanding of the extraordinary roles ordinary women played throughout British history....

A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine....

From the best-selling author of The Radium Girls comes another dark and dramatic but ultimately uplifting tale of a forgotten woman whose inspirational journey sparked lasting change for women’s rights and exposed injustices that still resonate today....

The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space....

Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down....

In 1945, Edith Farnsworth asked the German architect Mies van der Rohe, already renowned for his avant-garde buildings, to design a weekend home for her outside of Chicago. Edith was a woman ahead of her time....

In an innovative and engaging narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare’s England, Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-sixteenth century into the private lives of four women writers working at a time when women were legally the property of men....

The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers. But the little-known fact is that female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation - they've just been erased from the story. Until now....

As late as 1999, women who succeeded in science were called “exceptional” as if it were unusual for them to be so bright. They were exceptional, not because they could succeed at science but because of all they accomplished despite the hurdles....

Bringing Lenin to life for the first time as a complex human being, Sebestyen casts a new light on the Russian Revolution, one of the great turning points of modern history....

Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many artforms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it's never been told before....

Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II....

Women were there. For centuries, discussions of early Christianity have focused on male leaders in the church. But there is ample evidence right in the New Testament that women were actively involved in ministry, at the frontier of the gospel mission, and as respected leaders....

Mothering is as old as human existence. But how has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures? In Mother Is a Verb, the historian Sarah Knott creates a genre all her own in order to craft a new kind of historical interpretation....

One of history’s most iconic figures, Cleopatra is rightly remembered as a clever and charismatic ruler. But few today realize that she was the last in a long line of Egyptian queens who bore that name. Historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the dramatic story of these seven incomparable women....

A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism - from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington - Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect....

The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but....

A glittering portrait of the golden age of American department stores and of three visionary women who led them, from the award-winning author of The Plaza.

1916: Norma Wallace, age 15, arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution....

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule....

The untold story of the three intelligent and glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and of the conference’s fateful reverberations in the waning days of World War II....

A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo - the city that would become Tokyo - and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West....

At the height of World War II, LOOK Magazine profiled a small American community for a series of articles portraying it as the wholesome, patriotic model of life on the home front.

In an age of bolters - women who broke the rules and fled their marriages - Idina Sackville was the most celebrated of them all......

We now live in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, accessible tweakments, augmented reality face filters, photo editing apps, and exposure to more images than we were ever meant to see, we have the ability to craft ourselves in whichever way we please. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering? Are we really in control?

Extensively researched and told through alternating fiction and nonfiction chapters, this book illuminates a shocking truth: contrary to popular opinion, the witch hunts never ended. Alice shares research that suggests tens of thousands of witch hunt-related deaths have happened all over the world in the last thirty years. The Once & Future Witch Hunt also features tantalizing glimpses into Alice's ancestors' lives and reimagines the trials through fact-based fiction.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his senior thesis for Harvard in 1880 that women ought to be paid equal to men and have the option of keeping their maiden names upon marriage. It’s little surprise he’d be a feminist, given the women he grew up with. A dazzling and lyrical look at one America’s most significant presidents as we’ve never seen him before, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt celebrates five extraordinary yet unsung women who opened the door to the American Century and pushed Theodore Roosevelt through it.

Remembering The Most Valuable Lessons From Previous Lives. Have you always been intrigued by the mysteries of past lives – and how they’re directly connected to the struggles, blockages, and unusual experiences you have today? Do you feel a pull towards the whole concept of reincarnation and unraveling the hidden messages from your past lives in order to raise your vibration and reach a new level in your life?

Only 30 years ago, rape within marriage was not a crime, Judges saw rape victims as complicit for wearing short skirts; teenage runaways were groomed, pimped and then arrested as ‘common prostitutes’, and harassment, stalking, forced marriage and honour-based violence were not defined or recognised as separate offences in law. Since then there have been important legislative reforms but the law is only as good as those who enforce it. Telling the stories of a series of ground-breaking cases, Harriet Wistrich illustrates how far misogyny is baked into our justice system.

For over a hundred years until it closed in 1981, Henry Tate’s flagship sugar refinery at Love Lane dominated the Liverpool skyline - and was the beating heart of the local community. More than 10,000 workers passed through the doors of the factory during its lifetime, with some families counting four or even five generations of service. Young women leaving school in the post-war years were drawn by the good wages and the unrivalled social life that Tate & Lyle offered.

In this learned yet accessible book, Susan E. Hylen introduces first-century primary sources to illuminate listeners’ understanding of New Testament women. Perfect for clergy, spiritual reading groups, and all curious minds, Finding Phoebe combines incisive scholarship and instructional sensibility to encourage listeners to develop their own informed interpretations of Scripture.

How did South Africa turn out the way it did? In Moederland - 'Motherland', in Afrikaans - Cato Pedder takes us on an eye-opening journey across four centuries, tracing the country's turbulent past and the rise and fall of apartheid (and her family's charged legacy) through the lives of nine very different women.

Every queen had ladies-in-waiting. Her confidantes and chaperones, they are the forgotten agents of the Tudor court. Ever present and yet hidden behind the scenes, these women held the secrets and the hearts of some of the Tudor period's most powerful men and women. Experts at survival, negotiating the competing demands of their families and their queen, the ladies-in-waiting of Henry VIII's wives were far more than decorative 'extras': they were serious political players who changed the course of history, and four of them became queen themselves.

"The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865" is an evocative and historically significant diary penned by Eliza Frances Andrews, which vividly captures the tumult and transformation of the American South during the waning days of the Civil War and the onset of Reconstruction.

This remarkable historical novel is about Martyna, an 89 year old woman living in Germany who, on the 22nd of April, 2015, has a strange dream during her afternoon nap, then dies from a heart attack. But that is the beginning of the story, not the end. And the story—that she insists on experiencing in order to understand her just-completed life—is a powerful drama of courage and commitment, of love and loss, of longing and hope.

At the heart of this history is the female body. The century-span between the crinoline and the bikini witnessed more mutations in the ideal western woman's body shape than at any other period. In this richly detailed account, Virginia Nicholson takes us to the Frontline of Beauty to reveal the power, the pain and the pleasure involved in adorning the female body. Encompassing two world wars and a revolution in women's rights, All the Rage tells the story of western female beauty from 1860 to 1960.

Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. Wellington's timely–and deeply researched–account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.

Wendy Lower’s stunning account of the role of German women on the World War II Nazi eastern front powerfully revises history, proving that we have ignored the reality of women’s participation in the Holocaust, including as brutal killers. The long-held picture of German women holding down the home front during the war, as loyal wives and cheerleaders for the Führer, pales in comparison to Lower’s incisive case for the massive complicity, and worse, of the 500,000 young German women she places, for the first time, directly in the killing fields of the expanding Reich.

Epic poetry and tragic drama provide us with some of the richest ancient Greek depictions of women who are married to soldiers. In tales of the Trojan War, as told by Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, we encounter these mythical warriors' wives: Penelope, isolated but resourceful as she awaits the return of Odysseus after his lengthy absence; the war widow Andromache, enslaved and displaced from her homeland after the fall of Troy; the unfaithful and murderous Clytemnestra; and Tecmessa, a war captive who witnesses her partner's breakdown and suicide in the aftermath of battle.