A Will of Her Own


Book Description

The decades between the Progressive Era of the 1920s and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s were a period of profound change in the lives of southern women. The life of Sarah Towles Reed (1882–1978) illuminates and parallels many of these transformations. Over the course of her long public life as a teacher, labor union lobbyist, and activist for the rights of public school teachers, Reed emerged as a groundbreaking leader, unafraid of taking on the educational and political hierarchies of the South. A Will of Her Own is the life story of a woman who had a lasting impact on her times as well as the story of the times themselves. Reed engaged the most significant concerns of the liberal reformers during the first half of the twentieth century—the struggle for economic independence for women and the fight for women's rights, the effort to maintain intellectual freedom in the face of cold war paranoia, and the pursuit of racial justice. Her successes, as well as her failures, lend a personal perspective to these national trends. Her career also helps to clarify what it meant to be a southern liberal in the twentieth century and how the region's peculiar circumstances shaped the politics and strategies of southern reformers.




A Light of Her Own


Book Description

In Holland 1633, a woman’s ambition has no place. Judith is a painter, dodging the law and whispers of murder to try to become the first woman admitted to the Haarlem painters guild. Maria is a Catholic in a country where the faith is banned, hoping to absolve her sins by recovering a lost saint’s relic. Both women’s destinies will be shaped by their ambitions, running counter to the city’s most powerful men, whose own plans spell disaster. A vivid portrait of a remarkable artist, A Light of Her Own is a richly-woven story of grit against the backdrop of Rembrandt and an uncompromising religion. Story behind the story . . . The trail of Judith Leyster’s career was so faint that only years after her death in 1660, collectors began attributing her few surviving paintings to other artists. She signed her work with only a beautiful, stylized monogram. Credit went to Frans Hals, Jan Miense Molenaer, and others. She would remain lost to history until 1893.




A Will of Her Own


Book Description

Kara Shafer decides to give up on her college crush, Will Collier, and begin dating guys who are actually interested in her. Considering herself very average, Kara is surprised when handsome wannabe rocker, Jeff Ryder, picks her out of a crowd to be his muse. When Jeff's luck changes after meeting her, he asks her to elope. Throwing aside her usual good sense, she runs away with him and the band on a road trip toward fame and fortune, much of it based on the lyrics she writes. As Kara experiences the tumultuous ups and downs of her marriage, she often wonders if she might have been happier if she'd connected with Will. Has his life turned out as he planned? Does he think about the girl who wanted him so badly in college? Will she ever see him again?




A Visit from the Goon Squad


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption “features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” (The Chicago Tribune). One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. “Pitch perfect.... Darkly, rippingly funny.... Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” —The New York Times Book Review




Michelle Obama In Her Own Words


Book Description

This fascinating, often-funny and sometimes-controversial collection of quotations from Michelle Obama gives a revealing insight into the life and mind of the new First Lady. Featuring her thoughts on the election campaign and how she sees her role in the White House, this timely and inspirational compendium draws on a range of sources including press interviews, speeches and Michelle's own writing to share her reflections on: - the juggling act between work and motherhood - her own journey from Chicago's South Side to Princeton and Harvard - the women who have influenced her, and - controversial issues such as racism and the war in Iraq. It's an inspiring collection that gives a quick and fascinating glimpse into this intriguing woman's view of the world.




Strangers in Their Own Land


Book Description

The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump "A generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party. . . . This is a smart, respectful and compelling book." —Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book Review When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, "Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild's 'strangers in their own land' and a new elite." Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called "humble and important" by David Brooks and "masterly" by Atul Gawande, Hochschild's book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others. The paperback edition features a new afterword by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and also includes a readers' group guide at the back of the book.




A Room of One's Own


Book Description

Virginia Woolf's playful exploration of a satirical »Oxbridge« became one of the world's most groundbreaking writings on women, writing, fiction, and gender. A Room of One's Own [1929] can be read as one or as six different essays, narrated from an intimate first-person perspective. Actual history blends with narrative and memoir. But perhaps most revolutionary was its address: the book is written by a woman for women. Male readers are compelled to read through women's eyes in a total inversion of the traditional male gaze. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.




A Mine of Her Own


Book Description

prospectors for the first time. Sally Zanjani depicts more than one hundred women prospectors in often grueling, financially unrewarding, and utterly lonely efforts to strike it rich from the desert Southwest to the frozen rocks of Alaska and the Yukon. She tells their stories with warmth and skill and, in bringing them to life, forever changes our mental picture of the women who helped shape the modern West.




A Home of Her Own


Book Description

Illustrated with more than 100 color photographs, A Home of Her Own showcases a wide variety of homes and tells the stories of their making.




Doris Day


Book Description

For the first time, Doris Day tells the story behind the headlines of her private life -- three marriages, real and rumored affairs, and professional triumphs countered by personal tragedies.