Books for Women's History Month

Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman from Brooklyn elected to the New York State legislature and the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1968. She also made a run for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972. Focusing on Chisholm's lifelong advocacy for fair treatment, access to education, and equal pay for all American minority groups, this book explores the life of a remarkable woman in the context of twentieth-century urban America and the tremendous social upheaval that occurred after World War II.

Upper Level 324.623092 M228L
Lucy Stone; pivotal leader in the fight for both abolition and gender equality, her achievements marked the beginning of the women's rights movement and helped to lay the groundwork for the eventual winning of women's suffrage. Yet, today most Americans have never heard of Lucy Stone. Sally McMillen sets out to address this significant historical oversight in this engaging biography. Exploring her extraordinary life and the role she played in crafting a more just society, McMillen restores Lucy Stone to her rightful place at the center of the nineteenth-century women's rights movement.

Upper Level 320.08209 Oℓ12R
Rebutting the image of Mexican women as conservative and antirevolutionary, Jocelyn Olcott shows women activists challenging prevailing beliefs about the masculine foundations of citizenship. Piecing together material from national and regional archives, popular journalism, and oral histories, Olcott examines how women inhabited the conventionally manly role of citizen by weaving together its quotidian and formal traditions, drawing strategies from local political struggles and competing gender ideologies.

Biography - Upper Level B T79C
Celebrated for her exploits as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has entered history as one of nineteenth-century America's most enduring and important figures. Now, in a biography widely praised for its impeccable research and its compelling narrative, Harriet Tubman is revealed for the first time as a singular and complex character, a woman who defied simple categorization.

Upper Level 324.623092 B174S
They forever changed America: Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, Alice Paul. Their struggle was confrontational (women were the first to picket the White House for a political cause) and violent (women were arrested, jailed, and force-fed in prisons). Historian Jean H. Baker tellingly interweaves these women's private lives with their public achievements, presenting these revolutionary women in three dimensions, humanized, and marvelously approachable.

Children's Lit - Learning Center - Lower Level CL 509.22 Ig5W
A collection of artworks inspired by the lives and achievements of fifty famous women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, from the ancient world to the present, profiles each notable individual. Full of art, this collection also contains infographics about relevant topics such as lab equipment, rates of women currently working in STEM fields, and an illustrated scientific glossary. The trailblazing women profiled include well-known figures like primatologist Jane Goodall, as well as lesser-known pioneers such as Katherine Johnson, the African-American physicist and mathematician who calculated the trajectory of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

Upper Level 510.92 Es77A
The world's first computer programmer and daughter of Lord Byron finally gets credit for her research in this gossipy short biography. Over 150 years after her death, a widely-used scientific computer program was named "Ada," after Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the eighteenth century's version of a rock star, Lord Byron. Why? Because, after computer pioneers such as Alan Turing began to rediscover her, it slowly became apparent that she had been a key but overlooked figure in the invention of the computer.

Edwards and Harris discuss the critical contributions black women made to NASA in the 1950s. They performed by hand the calculations that made it possible for the nation's astronauts to fly into space and return safely to Earth. Their efforts made it possible for young black women of subsequent generations to become the mathematicians and astrophysicists of today.

Upper Level 179.1 R114R
In this book, editors Lisa H. Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore bring together seventeen writers, activists, and scholars from a range of disciplines to uncover the many sides of Rachel Carson. Exposing her enthusiasm for the natural world and the depth of her writings, the contributors examine her books, speeches, essays, and the letters she wrote. A testament to Carson's continued influence on environmental thought, this volume is for everyone who cares about finding ways to live sustainably on earth

Biography - Upper Level B G61A
This autobiography of Jane Goodall is a dramatic, moving, funny, and important book that tells the story of how an English girl who loved animals became one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century. It reveals this remarkable woman more vividly and clearly than anything that has been published before, by her or about her.

Reference - Main Level R 352.23 Sk17W
This unique book, written by an experienced politician and academic, is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of how and why women in 53 countries rose to the top in the years since World War II. Packed with fascinating case studies detailing the rise to power of all 73 female presidents and prime ministers from around the world, from 1960 (when the first was elected) to 2010, the motives, achievements and life stories of the female top leaders, including findings from interviews carried out by the author, provide a nuanced picture of women in power.

In Madam Chief Justice, editors W. Lewis Burke Jr. and Joan P. Assey chronicle the remarkable career of Jean Hoefer Toal, South Carolina's first female Supreme Court Chief Justice. As a lawyer, legislator, and judge, Toal is one of the most accomplished women in South Carolina history, features a foreword by Sandra Day O'Connor, and an introduction by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Upper Level 320.08209 K672C
Gathered here are the stories of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters who became guerrilla insurgents and political leaders, educators and healers -- who worked collectively to construct a new society of dignity and justice. Compañeras shows us how, after centuries of oppression, a few voices of dissent became a force of thousands, how a woman once confined to her kitchen rose to conduct peace negotiations with the Mexican government, and how hundreds of women overcame ingrained hardships to strengthen their communities from within.

Upper Level 320.08209 D685W
Employing data from an original survey of 3150 U.S. adults conducted in 2010, this book confronts scholarly concerns that gender stereotypes work to undermine women's chances of success. Challenging the conventional wisdom, these data demonstrate that voters do not rely heavily on gender stereotypes when evaluating and voting for women candidates.

Upper Level 973.929092 Aℓ15M
For eight years, during Bill Clinton's two presidential terms, Albright was a high-level participant in some of the most dramatic events of our time—from the pursuit of peace in the Middle East to NATO's intervention in the Balkans to America's troubled relations with Iran and Iraq. In this thoughtful memoir, one of the most admired women in U.S. history reflects on her remarkable personal story, including her upbringing in war-torn Europe and the balancing of career and family responsibilities, and on America's leading role in a changing world.

Upper Level 820.9 N13R
Azar Nafisi’s luminous masterwork gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny, and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

Upper Level 823.92 Ad45A
From the award-winning, bestselling author of We Should All Be Feminists and Half of a Yellow Sun—the story of two Nigerians making their way in the U.S. and the UK, raising universal questions of race, belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for identity and a home.

Upper Level 823 R812G
Arundhati Roy’s modern classic is equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.

Upper Level 813.54 C497H
Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children and their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics even as it depicts a new American landscape. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty.

Upper Level 813.54 At96H
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic.