Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

by Cokie Roberts

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts comes New York Times bestseller Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families–and their country–proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it. While much has been written about the men who signed the... (more)

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

by Megan Marshall

Fascinating, insightful, and wholly engrossing, The Peabody Sisters is a landmark biography of three women who made American intellectual history.Though theirs may not be household names, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody had an extraordinary influence on the thought of their day, the movement of intense creative ferment known as American Romanticism. Megan Marshall adeptly brings to life the sisters and the men... (more)

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson

by Brenda Wineapple

The first book to portray one of the most remarkable friendships in American letters, that of Emily Dickinson—recluse, poet—and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, minister, literary figure, active abolitionist. Their friendship began in 1862. The Civil War was raging. Dickinson was thirty-one; Higginson, thirty-eight. A former pastor at the Free Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, he wrote often for the cultural... (more)

The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery

The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery

by J. Fletcher

Nefertiti - 'the Beautiful' - is one of Egypt's most compelling and mysterious figures. She and her controversial pharaoh husband Akhenaten lived in perhaps the most tumultuous period in the country's long history, fascinating for both the enormous changes it brought to Egypt's culture and the many mysteries surrounding it. Top Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher has taken a fresh eye to the evidence and arrived at one... (more)

Madame Curie: A Biography

by Eve Curie, Curie, Eve

The professional triumphs and personal struggles of a pioneering woman scientist. This account of the remarkable life and astonishing mind of one of the greatest scientists of the century, written by her daughter, it remains a landmark and an inspiration for students, scientists, and young women everywhere.

Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams

by Lynne Withey

This is the life of Abigail Adams, wife of patriot John Adams, who became the most influential woman in Revolutionary America. Rich with excerpts from her personal letters, Dearest Friend captures the public and private sides of this fascinating woman, who was both an advocate of slave emancipation and a burgeoning feminist, urging her husband to "Remember the Ladies" as he framed the laws of their new country. ... (more)

Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns

by Cheryl L. Reed

When reporter Cheryl Reed set out to examine the lives of nuns, she was determined to find out what was behind the enigmatic image reinforced by Hollywood clich&eacutes, misguided speculation, and her Catholic friends' childhood stories of unyielding figures in black. For Unveiled , she interviewed more than 300 nuns of diverse beliefs, lifestyles, and orders. She lived and prayed with them, witnessed... (more)

Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World

Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World

by Jane Yolen

Throughout the ages, women from all classes and walks of life turned to pirating out of necessity, desperation, or greed. Acclaimed author Jane Yolen examines the contradictions of these bold women's lives and times. Meet Artemisia, the admiral-queen of Persia in 500 BC; Grania O'Malley, the Irish "pirate queen" who challenged Queen Elizabeth I's British ships; Madame Ching, who sailed the South China Sea in the... (more)

Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem

Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem

by Carolyn G. Heilbrun

From one of America's most respected critics comes an acclaimed biography of the controversial feminist. Here, Heilbrun illuminates the life and explores the many facets of Steinem's complex life, from her difficult childhood to the awakening that changed her into the most famous feminist in the world. Intimate and insightful, here is a biography that is as provocative as the woman who inspired it. Photos.

The Face Behind the Veil: The Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America

The Face Behind the Veil: The Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America

by Donna Gehrke-White

For years, the image of the Muslim woman in America has been shrouded in secrecy, as mysterious as the face behind the veil. In this timely and moving book, journalist Donna Gehrke-White provides a rare, revealing look into the hearts, minds, and everyday lives of Muslim women in America and opens a window on a culture as diverse as it is misunderstood. "The Face Behind the Veil" is an insightful chronicle of... (more)

Holding the Line

Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983

by Barbara Kingsolver

Novelist Barbara Kingsolver began her writing career with Holding the Line. It is the story of how women's lives were transformed by an eighteen-month strike against the Phelps-Dodge Copper Corporation. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, the story is partly oral history and partly social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment which occurs when people work together as a community.

Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

by Lyndall Gordon

The founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman of her era. A brilliant, unconventional rebel vilified for her strikingly modern notions of education, family, work, and personal relationships, she nevertheless strongly influenced political philosophy in Europe and a newborn America. Now acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon mounts a spirited defense of this courageous woman... (more)

Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol

by Nell Irvin Painter

Sojourner Truth--ex-slave and fiery abolitionist of the mid-nineteenth century, a figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher, and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. Straight-talking and unsentimental, Truth became an early national symbol for strong black women--indeed, for all strong women. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, she is regarded as a radical of immense... (more)

On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker (Lisa Drew Books (Paperback))

On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker (Lisa Drew Books (Paperback))

by A'Lelia Perry Bundles

On Her Own Ground is the first full-scale, definitive biography of Madam C. J. Walker -- the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist -- by her great-great-granddaughter, A'Lelia Bundles. The daughter of slaves, Madam C. J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then... (more)

Freedom's Daughters: A Juneteenth Story

by Lynne Olson

The first comprehensive history of the role of women in the civil rights movement, Freedom's Daughters fills a startling gap in both the literature of civil rights and of women's history. Stokely Carmichael, Andrew Young, John Lewis, and other well-known leaders of the civil rights movement have admitted that women often had the ideas for which men took credit. In this groundbreaking book, credit finally... (more)

Hall: Revolt Against Chivalry (Cloth)

by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall

This newly updated edition connects the past with the present, using the Clarence Thomas hearings -and their characterization by Thomas as a "high-tech lynching"- to examine the links between white supremacy and the sexual abuse of black women, and the difficulty of forging an antiracist movement against sexual violence. is the account of how Jesse Daniel Ames and the antilynching campaign she led fused the... (more)

Catherine The Great A biography of the woman who became Empress of all the RussiasZoe Oldenbourg

Catherine The Great A biography of the woman who became Empress of all the Russias

by Zoe Oldenbourg

A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters

A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters

by Mary Ritter Beard

Historian, social reformer, and women's suffrage campaigner, Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958) was one of the most prominent intellectuals of her day. Co-author with her husband, Charles Beard of "The Rise of American Civilization: and other works in US history, she also founded the modern field of women's history. This collection of her letters, offers in effect an intellectual biography which is considered to be... (more)

Making Waves 50 Greatest Women In Radio And Televi

Making Waves 50 Greatest Women In Radio And Televi

by American Women in Radio & Television

Making Waves captures the spirit and courage exhibited by the 50 greatest women in television and radio. It highlights the pioneers, both well-known personalities and behind-the-scenes movers, who've made it happen. Those featured were selected by the AWRT membership, based on their industry impact, audience influence, assistance in advancing women, and vision for the future. Honorees - from Lucille Ball to... (more)

Margaret Bourke-WhiteVicki Goldberg

Margaret Bourke-White

by Vicki Goldberg

Goldberg, a freelance journalist, recounts Bourke-White's achievements as the first woman photojournalist accredited to the U.S. armed forces. PW called this an "insightful, impressively researched biography that portrays a brave, dramatic and oddly vulnerable woman." Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Tags: biographies about women by women