Notable American Women by Harriette Walker
Maine is a rural backwater? Meet Hiram Abrams, born in Portland in 1878 the son of a Russian immigrant real estate broker, attended public schools, left school at age sixteen, sold newspapers, bought a cow and started a dairy -- and eventually became the founder and president of United Artists. Or Aurelia Gay Mace, born in 1835 in Strong, a Shaker from an early age, credited with the invention of the wire coat hanger. Aurelia achieved national fame in 1890 when she mistook Charles Lewis Tiffany for a tramp, gave him lemonade, brushed his clothes, insisted that he sit down for the noon meal, and sent him off with a box lunch. Tiffany responded by sending her a set of engraved silver. Meet Milton Bradley who was born in Vienna (Maine) in 1836, educated at Harvard, worked as a mechanical engineer and patent solicitor, became interested in lithography, developed a board game, The Checkered Game of Life, and founded the Milton Bradley Company. Or Louise Bogan, who was born in Livermore Falls in 1897, moved to Greenwich Village as a young woman, took up the bohemian life, occasionally drove the get away car for a fur thief, and ended up as the poetry critic for the New Yorker Magazine. And many more.
Anyone who has tried to look up any but the most famous women in the Dictionary of American Biography or Who Was Who knows the inestimable value of the first three volumes of Notable American Women published in 1971..This new volume, The Modern Period, represents 442 women who died between 1951 and 1975, from Eleanor Roosevelt, Josephine Baker and Hannah Arendt to Perle Mesta, ZaSu Pitts and Polly Adler--occupation, 'Madam'...A superb biographical dictionary. -- Jean Strouse Newsweek A different sort of reference book, the latest volume in a landmark series of biographical dictionaries funded by Radcliffe College and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Its entries are detailed and scholarly, yet immensely readable. Picking it up I found myself casually browsing from Jennie Grossinger to Zora Neale Hurston to Julia Morgan--and looked up to discover that a whole hour had passed. -- Alida Becker Philadelphia Inquirer This book supplements three earlier volumes from Radcliffe which carried us from colonial days to 1950. For inclusion here, a notable woman had to die between 1951 and 1975--a quarter century of obituaries...Given the fact that a reference book must squeeze large numbers of facts into little allotments of space, this book is surprisingly well written. It is not easy to proceed with a scholarly straight face after the heading, 'Adler, Polly, April 16 1900?- June 9, 1962. Madam.' Birth and death certificates are used when they are available and standard references are unobtrusively corrected. Yet some writers manage to be witty under all the restraints and some are positively moving--e.g. Mary McGrory on Doris Fleeson, Anne Douglas on Dorothy Parker or Sally Fitzgerald on Flannery O'Connor. -- Garry Wills New York Times Book Review One of the most easily read and factually accurate references available. Ms. Magazine There are role models here for generations of American women yet to come and lessons to be learned from this extraordinary piece of research, not only about America's past but about its future. Boston Globe
Barbara Sicherman is Kenan Professor of American Institutions and Values, Trinity College, and coeditor of Notable American Women: The Modern Period.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780674627338 |
| ISBN 10 | 0674627334 |
| Title | Notable American Women |
| Author | Harriette Walker |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
| Year published | 1986-01-01 |
| Number of pages | 816 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |