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America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America. By culling the most fascinating characters -- the average as well as the celebrated -- Gail Collins, the editorial page editor at the New York Times, charts a journey that shows how women lived, what they cared about, and how they felt about marriage, sex, and work. She begins with the lost colony of Roanoke and the early southern "tobacco brides" who came looking for a husband and sometimes -- thanks to the stupendously high mortality rate -- wound up marrying their way through three or four. Spanning wars, the pioneering days, the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, America's Women describes the way women's lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances, rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics. While keeping her eye on the big picture, Collins still notes that corsets and uncomfortable shoes mattered a lot, too. "The history of American women is about the fight for freedom," Collins writes in her introduction, "but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's roles that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders." Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience, America's Women is both a great read and a landmark work of history.… (more)
User reviews
I loved reading about the clothing and food of the times, the ways in which women managed households and children, the laws that bound them, and the astonishing strength it took for them to do what was asked of them, or refuse to do it. Without a book such as this that presents the other side of the story, it would be difficult to understand just how much women contributed to the history of America.
Written in intelligent, well-documented prose, it is an easy, entertaining and occasionally humorous read. I read each page eagerly and even after 450 pages, was sorry to see it finished.
Or, to grasp the nettle, and put things a little more bluntly: at least she didn't feel the need to lie to get her point across, right? I mean,
.....
But, to be honest, I had to take a point off for length. Usually I try to give the benefit of the doubt, and not take off, as long as the quality remains the same, (and sometimes it doesn't), but I've come to the point where lots of footnotes don't impress me the way they used to, and if the writing avoids being terrible, it's still...pretty average.
(Yeah, sometimes it doesn't, I meant....it's hard to say, to explain. Sometimes it doesn't, in general, I meant, but here, too, I guess. Although it is better than average *at times*, such as in the part about Salem....and, although part of me wanted a little more about John Proctor, ('John Proctor, you are conspired with *Antichrist*!'), and Giles Corey, ('More weight!'), I *try* not to whine as much as I might....even if *I* think it's kinda funny sometimes! But it's good that Rebecca Nurse got her due, because she deserves it, and so do Elizabeth Proctor and Martha Corey, and the others.)
And if social history, and women's history, and so on, has its own pretensions to importance, so does political history and military history, and every other kind of history, and so on.
(Even though not everybody always shares those assessments....not even, say, "the rock people", as Sheldon put it.)
Then again, I've started to think that it's just difficult to turn history into something worth reading, in general. It's fun to dig documents out of the archives, but less fun to read about it...and I've been on both sides of it now, more or less.
......
Anyway, it's basically just an average book, but that doesn't really matter...what I really learned (which I was sorta already learning), was that the less history I let myself read, the better off I'll (probably) be.
In other words, I'm not going to read any more Paul Johnson, nor any more of this....
..............
Anyway....I normally try not to do this sort of thing, talking about the subject instead of the book, but since I do sometimes, and since it is what is....
The past is my ballast, and so is suspicion. I try to think about it all, I try to fix things, to do things better, to do it all right....but is anybody listening? It just seems like you want to get me out of the way....what's expected of me, I wonder....And I don't want anyone to get shunted aside into anything that nobody wants, why can't people just be who they are, and be appreciated....and so I try this and I try that, but I'm so alone....and suspicion makes everything nothing!
Anyway.
But I guess it's not the book's fault....
A book is just so much paper, after all. ^^
(So, no more hobby horses for me!)
.........
And I will stand behind that--a book is just so much paper....and sometimes, it's not even that.
WE SHOULD ALL AGREE (that I'm good and you suck). *rolls eyes*
But, like I said, it could have been worse....and sometimes, I'm not even sure that it's the same sort of book that some of you are reading into it!
*shrugs*
(8/10)
The book moves chronologically through time, from Virginia Dare to 2000, and is comprised of many short (3-4pg) chapters, each focused on a particular life or issue. The text is heavy on primary source information - actual quotes from women's diaries and historical documents - which makes each vignette feel refreshingly authentic. Yes, "women's issues" like the sufferagette movement receive attention, but they comprise a small part of the vast sweep of this book, which explores the changing ways in which Americans of various genders and race, over the past 400 years, have approached family, health, gender roles, politics, and culture.
I read this while on vacation at the beach and on almost every page found some tidbit of information so interesting that I had to share it with the family. As a result, there's now a queue to borrow my copy of the book - a queue which includes more men than women, by the way.
People
Of course, the book cannot be comprehensive. It does a good job of covering as much ground as it can but it's constrained by pages and records. Still, Collins does a great job with what she has.
It gives you perspective.
Women of all ages, races, and social standing are written about, in a very enjoyable and readable style, with stories that are alternately courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking. I really enjoyed reading this one, especially when the author talked about the details of everyday life for the average woman, but for me, the book really picked up and became more exciting when I got to the chapters about the pioneers settling in the west, and beyond. If you are interested in American history, I highly recommend this book.
If nothing else it celebrates and gives credit to all of the American women who have contributed to the molding of our American culture and should be required reading for all high school students.