March Is Women's History Month

            Celebrate women from all over the world and throughout time by learning their stories. Here are some current books that will help you.

            In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons from 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules is written by Karen Karbo. The author reviews the lives and accomplishments of several women from recent history, celebrities all. They include Amelia Earhart, Helen Gurley Brown, Hillary Clinton, Nora Ephron, Frida Kahlo, Billie Jean King, J.K. Rowling and more. Learn what makes them an inspiration to us all.

            Bad Girls from History: Wicked or Misunderstood? is written by Dee Gordon. From different countries, different centuries, and different cultures, these ladies aren’t the law-abiding citizens we usually honor. Whether they were cited because of sexual misconduct, murder, thievery, or other crimes, you will get the inside scoop on such women as Cleopatra, Bonnie Parker, Jezebel, Lizzie Gordon, and more.

            The Women Who Made New York is written by Julie Scelfo, a journalist who has written for the New York Times and Newsweek. The book features more than 100 women who contributed to the social, cultural, political and economic development of the city. Illustrations by Hallie Heald enrich the text.

            Bet you don’t know about all of these female radicals featured in Rad Women Worldwide: Artists and Athletes, Pirates and Punks, and Other Revolutionaries Who Shaped History. Written by Kate Schatz, this book tells the stories of forty women, from Hatshepsut (a female king of Egypt) to Malala Yousafzi (the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize) and accompanies each with an illustrated portrait done by artist Miriam Klein Stahl.  

The Girls of Atomic City: the Untold Story of the Women who Helped Win World War II

           Written by journalist Denise Kiernan, this is the story of the beginning of the atomic warfare era and the women who helped make it happen. Beginning in the 1930s, the idea of atomic energy began to develop within the international scientific community. Then with the advent of World War II and its horrific cost to human life, the United States government decided to achieve the development of atomic warfare, before the enemy did. They established several worksites to conduct this mammoth project; the largest one located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is the one that Kiernan examines.

            Using in-depth interviews of some of the surviving workers, along with historic documents, news articles, and other sources, Kiernan describes how this project influenced such sociological trends as working women, segregation of the races, mingling of the sexes, and the rapid development of a community. This mix of history and memoir is both informative and enjoyable to read. Historic photos of the worksite accompany the text.

March is Women's History Month

            This is the month to celebrate contributions made by women in all walks of life, whether  their accomplishments are great or conventional. Here are some books written by and/or        
about political leaders and activists.

            Bella Abzug was a lawyer, U.S. Representative (1971-1978), social activist and a leader of the Women’s Movement. Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against War and for the Planet, and Shook up Politics along the Way: an Oral History, is written by Suzanne Levine.

            Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist. She wrote The Feminine Mystique, considered an important book of the American Feminist Movement of the 1960s. Friedan also was the first president of the National Organization for Women. Friedan’s autobiography is entitled Life so Far.

            Kirsten Gillibrand currently is a United States senator from New York State (since 2009). Her book Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World is both a biography detailing her youth and her political career, and an appeal for more women to become politically active.

            Condoleezza Rice is the former Secretary of State (2005 – 2009) and currently is a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She has written the book Condoleezza Rice: a Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me, which details her childhood in segregated Birmingham, Alabama and her road to politics.

            Margaret Sanger was a nurse who became a sex educator and birth control advocate during the early and middle twentieth century. She established organizations that eventually became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. You can read The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger, written by her. Also, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, written by Jonathan Eig describes Sanger’s contributions along with those of three other individuals in developing what was the first birth control pill.

            Sonia Sotomayor is currently an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (2009 - ). Her book My Beloved World describes her journey as a Hispanic-American lawyer who progressed through the ranks as a district attorney to an appointment as a judge in the U.S. District Court to the U.S. Court of Appeals and finally the Supreme Court.