While many people won't wade through a book about women's history, they will read biographies of famous or notable women. Thus, for many people, biographies are their main access to issues with which women's history is concerned, including how women lived their lives, how being female affected their lives and how they accepted or rebelled against expected roles. Here are some women worth getting to know through their biographies:
1. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker
by A'Lelia Bundles. Madam Walker was not only the first African American millionaire in America, she also provided a path of success for thousands of other women and she donated much money for racial justice and women's rights. In this biography, Walker's great-great-granddaughter, a journalist, not only brings Madam Walker and her life's struggles and successes to life, but also sheds light on the larger social issues of Walker's time.
2. Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America
by Elliott Gorn. From my review: "At last, those interested in more than the image of Mother Jones can see her actual contributions to the labor movement in all their complexity. She becomes, in Gorn's book, not a sad or pathetic figure who often exaggerated her contributions and often sacrificed means for ends, but an even stronger, authentic human being, transforming adversity into commitment, mothering the whole of working class America and ...."3. Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams
by Lynne Whithey. We're fortunate that Abigail Adams' letters were preserved, because she published nothing. But her letters reveal her lively personality, her wit, her intelligence and also shed light on the many roles she fulfilled during her lifetime. A "dearest friend" of her husband, American revolutionary and later president John Adams, she also managed their property and money, educated their children and commented with insight on the politics of the times.4. Marie Antoinette: The Journey
by Antonia Fraser. Always-readable historian and biographer Antonia Fraser moves from her usual focus on English events and people to France. Much like the also-readable Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France by Evelyne Lever, Fraser's biography helps the reader see the very real woman behind the public perceptions of her own time and ours. Both books emphasize her dignity in her final months.5. Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House
by Phyllis Lee Levin. Levin marshalls many sources, including newly-released medical notes from Wilson's doctor, to show that the charges long levelled are true: that Edith served, essentially, in her husband's place while he was so disabled he could not fulfill the president's duties. Edith has been called the first woman president of the U.S. for her role in this time; it may have cost the support of the League of Nations, as Levin documents.6. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Another dual President/First Lady biography, presidential biographer Goodwin turns her focus to the individuals and family relationships with the World War as background. During this time, while FDR was unable to be as active as many thought a president must be during a time of war, Eleanor became his "ears and eyes." Their relationship, broken many years before over Franklin's mother's authoritarianism and Franklin's infidelity, found a new and different strength.7. Personal History
by Katharine Graham. In her autobiography, the woman who headed the Washington Post during key years of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers reflects on the life and work of a woman who was thrust into her powerful and nontraditional role against her own choices.8. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by Nancy Milford. Edna St. Vincent Millay, who's known today more for poems often considered trite and overdone, was in her time a popular public figure, with her poetry readings very popular. Milford helps us understand why she was so fascinating -- and why her life was such a mess. Her addictions, her affairs with women and with men, her "Bohemian" lifestyle as a "new woman" are all painfully and engagingly documented.9. Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History
by Kati Marton. America has not yet had a woman president, unless you count Edith Wilson (see above). Yet the women married to the men who've served as president have wielded their own influence. This book doesn't have the depth that books focusing on specific marriages do (the Wilson and Roosevelt biographies included on this page included), but she's able to address: how have these women balanced talents and power with an essentially traditional role, simply being the president's wife?10. First Mothers
by Bonnie Angelo. In the first hundred years or so of America's history, schoolchildren and adults alike were fascinated by studying the mothers of the presidents. This book is a rich 21st century approach to the same subject: how did these women help shape these men of power and influence?