America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (P.S.)

Rich in detail, filled with fascinating characters, and panoramic in its sweep, this magnificent, comprehensive work tells for the first time the complete story of the American woman from the Pilgrims to the 21st-century

In this sweeping cultural history, Gail Collins explores the transformations, victories, and tragedies of women in America over the past 300 years. As she traces the role of females from their arrival on the Mayflower through the 19th century to the feminist movement of the 1970s and today, she demonstrates a boomerang pattern of participation and retreat.

In some periods, women were expected to work in the fields and behind the barricades—to colonize the nation, pioneer the West, and run the defense industries of World War II. In the decades between, economic forces and cultural attitudes shunted them back into the home, confining them to the role of moral beacon and domestic goddess. Told chronologically through the compelling true stories of individuals whose lives, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman’s experience, Untitled is a landmark work and major contribution for us all.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Well researched and well written, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines is a powerful and important book. Starting with Pocahontas and Eleanor Dare (the first female colonist), this lively and fascinating history records the changes in American women’s lives and the transformations in American society from the 1580s through the 2000s.

A history of the oft-marginalized sex must often draw from diaries and journals, which were disproportionally written by whites; as a result, African-American and Native American women are not as well represented as white in the earlier chapters of America’s Women. However, Gail Collins writes about women of many races and ethnicities, and in fact provides more information about Native Americans, African-Americans, and Chinese, Jewish, and Italian immigrants than some general U.S. history books. She writes about rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, slave and slave-owner, athlete and aviatrix, president’s wife and presidential candidate–and, of course, men and women. And some of these women–from the justly famous, like Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman, to the undeservedly obscure, like Elizabeth Eckford and Senator Margaret Chase Smith–will not only make any woman proud to be a woman, they will make any American proud to be American.

An editor at the New York Times, Gail Collins has also written Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics and, with Dan Collins, The Millennium Book. –Cynthia Ward

From Booklist

In a vibrant history of American women that is as vast and varied as the nation itself, Collins elegantly and eruditely celebrates the hard-won victories, overwhelming obstacles, and selfless contributions of a captivating array of influential women. Chronicling issues both critical and obscure, Collins demonstrates an uncommon appreciation of commonplace subjects, taking a “you are there” approach to illuminate the extraordinary challenges faced by pioneer women, such as needing to provide diapers for their babies, or to empathize with a young Pilgrim woman faced with forging a life in a hostile wilderness. From the first English child born in the “new world” to the birth of the “second wave” of feminism, the characters and subjects that have formed, and informed, women’s current status are presented from a broad perspective and personal viewpoint to create a thoroughly readable, often revelatory, and intimately refined account of the philosophical concepts and practical considerations that embody the past, enable the present, and empower the future of American women. Carol Haggas
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Review

“Though America’s Women is an easy and entertaining read, it also fulfills the radical promise of women’s history.”