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An analysis of gender politics in the American Jewish community during the interwar period that reveals the role of gender and class in organizational politics and the importance of Jewish women in American political and activist history. ... Read more

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The war on terror has been raging for many years now, and subsequently there is a growing body of literature examining the development, motivation and effects of this US-led aggression. Virtually absent from these accounts is an examination of the central role that gender, race, class and sexuality play in the war on terror. This lack of attention reflects a continued resistance by analysts to acknowledge and engage identity-related social issues as central elements within global politics.As this conflict spreads and deepens, it is more important than ever to examine how diverse international actors are using the war on terror as an opportunity to reinforce existing gendered, raced, classed and sexualized inter/national relations. This book examines the official war stories being told to the international community about why and against whom the war on terror is being waged.This engaging book, now available in paperback, will benefit students, scholars and practitioners in the areas of international relations, women's studies and cultural studies. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Insight Into a Significant, Yet Obscure, Hostess
I was inspired to learm more about Kate Chase after reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals".This biography more than satisfied me.It is well written and provides good insight into this Washington Hostess of the Lincoln era and beyond.The reader learns that Kate Chase was QUITE A LADY.I recommend this book highly for the knowledge available into this relatively obscure, yet important, person.

Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and Gender
An excellent book!The author really knows her subject and makes this history book as readable as a romance novel.An amazing amount of history that a lot of us might have skipped over in another book.Once I started this book I couldn't put it down.

Outstanding
I've read every biography on Kate Chase Sprague that's around today, and this one, by far, is the best.Peg Lamphier combines the historical background with the characters of Kate and William, and masterfully brings both of them to life in a way I have yet to see in other books.I was so impressed that I've read this book more than once, and each time I find something that makes me remember, Kate was a real person, and a "glorious girl", and what happened to her could happen to anyone.

Kate's life is one that makes me want to go back in time and shake her, but then, we all have to live our lives and do the best that we can with our choices and paths we take.

This biography is well-written, well-researched, and extremely interesting.The author comes across as being much more sympathetic towards Kate than some I've read do, but that's okay.It fits in this book.This is definitely not a novel and not easy reading at times, but I highly recommend it for any serious student of Kate Chase, her marriage to William Sprague, and for those curious about gender and gender differences during the Victorian Era.

Cindy Obermier

Well Researched and Illuminating
This is at least the 5th biography of the Civil War Northern Belle, Kate Chase (daughter of Lincoln's Treasury Secretary), and it takes good advantage of material not available to prior researchers.It continues the revisionist trend from the last bio ("Kate Chase for the Defense", by Sokoloff) of trying to humanize this ambitious woman and portrary her in a more sympathetic light than the first several books.The author makes as good a case as one can for her point of view, and candidly admits to favoritism (she announces in the prologue that she will ever be a Kate supporter, and discloses an unmitigated hatred of Kate's husband William Sprague). But the gender politics angle grows tiresome after a while and detracts from the story. One wishes the book were told in a more dramatic manner; there is certainly more than enough raw material for that.

The best new stuff here concerns the hitherto unknown extent to which the Roscoe Conkling-Kate Chase relationship continued well after the famous "shotgun" incident in which the cuckolded Sprague threatened to blow Conkling's head off, setting off a national scandal.I was particularly intrigued by materials indicating that Kate continued to press the case for Conkling to President Chester Alan Arthur, urging Arthur to give her lover a high-level position in his administration at a time when it should have been obvious that this was not in the cards.Indeed, much of the new research material merely bolsters the picture of Kate Chase as a ceaselessly calculating individual, almost oblivious to what others thought of her. The author is not averse to calling her subject on a number of things, particularly her public prevarication following the shotgun incident, but the sense is that Kate is let off a bit too lightly on this and other matters. And the effort to explain much of Kate's behavior as stemming from a serious, substantive concern for liberal Republican values is not terribly convincing; there is little hard evidence that Kate's political activity was based on anything other than a desire to see her and her loved ones (her father, Conkling, even Sprague) attain positions of personal and political power. That is how virtually all of her contemporaries who knew her saw her (even friends such as John Hay), and the modern biographer bears a heavy burden in trying to impeach that conventional view. (the one vignette I wish the author had included is Hay's diary account of how Kate virtually pleaded with him to dine with her and Conkling a few years after the scandal; Hay made up an excuse for declining).

While early biographers went too far in painting Kate Chase as a cold, ambitious, cutthroat personality, this book tilts a bit too far in the other direction.We could now use a full-bodied, objective bio of this fascinating woman which makes use of the wealth of new material that seems to keep turning up and does not lose sight of the powerful drama that attended her life and times. ... Read more

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In November 1918, German women gained the right to vote, and female suffrage would forever change the landscape of German political life. Women now constituted the majority of voters, and political parties were forced to address them as political actors for the first time.

Analyzing written and visual propaganda aimed at, and frequently produced by, women across the political spectrum--including the Communists and Social Democrats; liberal, Catholic, and conservative parties; and the Nazis--Julia Sneeringer shows how various groups struggled to reconcile traditional assumptions about women's interests with the changing face of the family and female economic activity. Through propaganda, political parties addressed themes such as motherhood, fashion, religion, and abortion. But as Sneeringer demonstrates, their efforts to win women's votes by emphasizing "women's issues" had only limited success.

The debates about women in propaganda were symptomatic of larger anxieties that gripped Germany during this era of unrest, Sneeringer says. Though Weimar political culture was ahead of its time in forcing even the enemies of women's rights to concede a public role for women, this horizon of possibility narrowed sharply in the face of political instability, economic crises, and the growing specter of fascism. ... Read more

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In this richly detailed and imaginatively researched study, Victoria Bynum investigates "unruly" women in central North Carolina before and during the Civil War.Analyzing the complex and interrelated impact of gender, race, class, and region on the lives of black and white women, she shows how their diverse experiences and behavior reflected and influenced the changing social order and political economy of the state and region.Her work expands our knowledge of black and white women by studying them outside the plantation setting.

Bynum searched local and state court records, public documents, and manuscript collections to locate and document the lives of these otherwise ordinary, obscure women.Some appeared in court as abused, sometimes abusive, wives, as victims and sometimes perpetrators of violent assaults, or as participants in ilicit, interracial relationships.During the Civil War, women freqently were cited for theft, trespassing, or rioting, usually in an effort to gain goods made scarce by war.Some women were charged with harboring evaders or deserters of the Confederacy, an act that reflected their conviction that the Confederacy was destroying them.

These politically powerless unruly women threatened to disrupt the underlying social structure of the Old South, which depended on the services and cooperation of all women.Bynum examines the effects of women's social and sexual behavior on the dominant society and shows the ways in which power flowed between private and public spheres.Whether wives or unmarried, enslaved or free, women were active agents of the society's ordering and dissolution. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Vicki
I think that Victoria Bynum writes the most accurate books on the Southern South.I was born and raised in Mississippi, I'm 77 years old.My family was from Jones County.Over the years I've heard many tales about living in the that area and the Civil war.

Actually a fun read.
I bought this book because a Google search showed it had information about one of my ancesters.

I wasn't sure what to expect.Dry dissertation?Hugely slanted feminist agenda?History reduced to charts and tables?

None of the above, I'm happy to say.This is an interesting and engaging look at the lives of some not-so-upstanding women of the 1800s in central NC.It's both approachable for the non-academic (that's me) and yet offers a good, full set of references with which one can do more research.If this were a class, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

As a bonus, I found information about more than one of my own ancesters in the book.Boy, I wish I'd had some of this information when my mother would go on about "your generation doesn't know how to behave like ladies and gentlemen." Yeah, well, mom, apprently neither did your grandmothers' generation!

Such an interesting, gripping book!
This secondary source was truly unique and different from all women's history book that I have ever read.It gives a detailed view of atypical and deviant women who engaged in behaviors that were controversial during the Antebellum period.I used this when I was writing a report on deviant women of the south.This book takes place in North Carolina becuase N.C. has the most records of divorce, miscegenation, etc.She uses court cases and divorce records and compares different counties and thier court rulings.This book is an excellent source for reports and entertainment.It never bores and keeps you reading and educated all the way. ... Read more

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Angels in the Machinery offers a sweeping analysis of the centrality of gender to politics in the United States from the days of the Whigs to the early twentieth century. Author Rebecca Edwards shows that women in the U.S. participated actively and influentially as Republicans, Democrats, and leaders of third-party movements like Prohibitionism and Populism--decades before they won the right to vote--and in the process managed to transform forever the ideology of American party politics. Using cartoons, speeches, party platforms, news accounts, and campaign memorabilia, she offers a compelling explanation of why family values, women's political activities, and even candidates' sex lives remain hot-button issues in politics to this day. ... Read more

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In the mata-narrative of histories, the dominant motif of women in violent conflict is the Grieving Mother. Yet, there are many faces of women in conflict in South Asia. Women have negotiated conflict situations by becoming citizens, combatants, heads of households, war munitions workers, prostitutes, producers of soldiers and war resisters, and political leaders at the local and national levels. At one end in South Asia, is the Woman of Violence represented by the Armed Virgin of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam), and at the other, the Woman of Peace, symbolised by the Naga Mothers Association in the nationalist struggle for an independent Nagaland.

Structured around six narratives of women negotiating violent politics in their everyday lives, this book shifts the focus away from the victimhood discourse and explores women's agency for both peace and conflict. Threaded through these essays is the controversial theme of the dualism of "loss and gains": the societal upheaval caused by conflict opens up public spaces for women, thus bringing about unintended but desirable structural changes for women's empowerment; yet, it is precisely at this time that the impulse to women's transformation is circumscribed by the nationalist project itself, which casts women in the role of guardians of the community's accepted and acceptable distinct cultural identity and tradition.

This book is a vital and timely contribution to the literature on women's culture of peace politics. ... Read more

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A study on Polish women prose writers from a turbulent time in that country's literary history. Key writers examined include Klemenntyna Hoffmanowa, Narcyza michovska, Eliza Orzeszkowa and Zofia Nakowska. The author's approach of major feminist theory and post-feminist thought throws new light on Polish women writers and their contribution to European thought. ... Read more

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"Women, Press, and Politics" explores the literary and historical significance of women's writing for the most influential body of nationalist journalism during the Irish Revival, the advanced nationalist press. This work studies women's writings in the Irish nationalist tradition, focusing in particular on leading female voices in the cultural and political movements that helped launch the Easter Rising of 1916: Augusta Gregory, Alice Milligan, Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Delia Larkin, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Louise Bennett. Karen Steele argues that by examining the innovative work of these writers from the perspective of women's artistry and women's political investments, we can best appreciate the expansive range of their cultural productions and the influence these had on other nationalists, who went on to shape Irish politics and culture in the decades to come. ... Read more

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"Terrifying...Impressive...A challenging esay that justifies the feminist revival."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bestselling author and feminist scholar Marilyn French has written a shocking and fascinating analysis of the history of women's political, cultural, physical, and economic repression that is as controversial as it is utterly convincing. In this stunning work of resarch, Ms. French creates a devastating portrait of today's male-dominated global society, with its underlying aim of destroying, subjugating, or mutilating women. Here is a devastating indictment of our values and an important step toward an urgent public discussion of human morality.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

A reason to be glad and a reason to be sad
I know woman's rights is so out of "vogue". As it seems the things some had fought so hard for, are slowly being undermined glad to see a new generation of people who care what happen to all women for all our mother daughters grand-daughters and sisters thanks for writing and thanks for reading and caring.

Read This
When we live in a world where women can be bought, men can rape and kill their wives under the protection of the law, and women are being sexually mutilated against their will a book like this becomes very important. Many may like to believe Marilyn French is a man-hater. I, however, do not. I think some of her ideas and points may seem radical because we are all products of a patriarchical society...we can not help but not see just how wrong things are and how sexist our habits and thinking are when the world we have grown up in is a sexist(among many others things) one.

Divisive, hate based radical gender feminist perspective of men.

I was appalled and offended by the hate based demeaning language used to describe men and the over all theme that men are inherently evil oppressors of women. I suspect this book is a response to the books entitled The War Against Men and The War Against Boys which actually promote healing and political reform from the wounds caused by feminists such as this who have taken control of feminism and the women's movement. This type of thinking causes nothing but hate, anger and pain.

Brilliant, well researched analysis.
While many will find it easiest to dismiss this book in the manner that the simple-minded dismiss well argued and reasonable controversial works, such dismissal will be much more difficult for intelligent and well educated individuals. Her arguments are powerful and well supported, her observations astute, her conclusions sound and reasonable. This is one of the most important feminist books ever written and an absolute must read for anyone - anyone at all - who is concerned about the global situation of women.

Biased and distorted facts.
Marilyn French is a "Gender Feminist " not an "Equity Feminist" which in turn has distorted her concept of truth.
One could also say that little girls at an early age learn to manipulate and use their gender against boys! Who in turn learn to look at the female as dishonest.And then learn to counter this dishonesty. Boy's and men are most often secure in their gender whereas females are constantly warring and competing against men. One must be objective when writing a book of sorts or one will only prove that people such as Marilyn French are BIASED by their own personal FEELING's which we know to distort facts from truth..

... Read more

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Cynthia Enloe's riveting new book looks at the end of the Cold War and places women at the center of international politics. Focusing on the relationship between the politics of sexuality and the politics of militarism, Enloe charts the changing definitions of gender roles, sexuality, and militarism at the end of the twentieth century.
In the gray dawn of this new era, Enloe finds that the politics of sexuality have already shifted irrevocably. Women glimpse the possibilities of democratization and demilitarization within what is still a largely patriarchal world. New opportunities for greater freedom are seen in emerging social movements--gays fighting for their place in the American military, Filipina servants rallying for their rights in Saudi Arabia, Danish women organizing against the European Community's Maastricht treaty. Enloe also documents the ongoing assaults against women as newly emerging nationalist movements serve to reestablish the privileges of masculinity.
The voices of real women are heard in this book. They reach across cultures, showing the interconnections between military networks, jobs, domestic life, and international politics. The Morning After will spark new ways of thinking about the complexities of the post-Cold War period, and it will bring contemporary sexual politics into the clear light of day as no other book has done. ... Read more

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During the Spanish Civil War, women-long oppressed in Spain-were active both on the front and in the rear guard.Drawing on oral and written testimony from these women, this book is the first to focus on their contributions to the war effort and the social and psychological implications of this radical change in their traditional role. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

HONOR THE ANTI-FASCIST WOMEN OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
IN THE YEAR OF THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BARCELONA UPRISING HONOR THE ANTI-FASCIST WOMEN FIGHTERS

One of the great achievements of the last thirty plus years in the women's liberation movement has been the dramatic increase in the amount of scholarship on the role of women in history. That is to the good. Even better when the research concerns the role of women in a subject that is one near to my heart-the anti-fascist struggle in the Spanish Civil War. One can argue with the feminist politics that drives Ms. Mangini's work. One can argue about the somewhat arcane literary/sociological academic methodology that she uses to motivate her study. What cannot be argued is that she has made an important contribution to giving voice to the women of that struggle that has been muted for a long time. While it is true that history is made by the victors, or at least the flow of propaganda is controlled by them, the stories that she has to tell about those women who served, were imprisoned, executed by Franco and forced into external and internal exile makes for compelling reading.

If one knows anything about the role of women in the Spanish Civil War it usually revolves around thepersonality of the famous Stalinist Dolores Ibarruri-'La Pasionaria'- well known for her slogan-'They Shall Not Pass' during the siege of Madrid. For those a little more knowledgeable the name of the Anarchist governmental minister Frederica Montseny may come to mind. Beyond that there is generally a blank. Ms. Mangini has filled in those blanks with the stories of lesser well known women leaders, militia women, rank and file politicos and those who helps the cause in a myriad of other ways. She vividly describes their roles behind the lines, on the front, in the political organizations, in prison awaiting long sentences or execution after defeat, and in exile. Ms. Magnini also describes something that I have found to be generally true of those who fought on the Republican side-male or female-the extreme difficulty in articulating what they did and what happened to them even after the end of the Franco regime in 1975. Obviously, in some cases, those stories will never be told or told in a muted manner. One thing is sure for those of us who cherish the memory of the anti-fascist fight in Spain. General Franco should never have been able to die in his bed.
... Read more

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The Women's Peace Union grew out of the women's suffrage movement of the early-20th century. This text investigates the personalities and the philosophical disagreements of the union's leading members, their political tactics, commitment to pacifism and feminism, and eventual burnout. ... Read more

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Based on extensive research, this text provides a critical investigation of the development of the Women's Co-operative Guild from the 1880s to World War II. Charting the rise and fall of an exceptional feminist political organization, the author assesses the political significance of the movement during the decades of its greatest influence and examines the causes and circumstances of its demise. Advancing a fresh perspective on working-class women's organizations, this book combines historical narrative, biography and political analysis. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Female fascists redux
Agnes Waters, a prominent far right wing agitator of the 1930s and 1940s, had a specific plan of action in mind when she told her supporters that America needed a revolution of mothers to overthrow the Roosevelt regime and his New Deal. "Let's keep a clothesline handy in every little back yard to hang the traitors, or a gun. And let's all of us be known as pistol-packin' mamas." Historian June Melby Benowitz documents the activities of Agnes Waters and other female extremists in "Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945." The book presents two case studies of far right women, Elizabeth Dilling and the lesser known Grace Wick, before moving on to examine the underlying issues concerning far right females in the 1930s and 1940s. Subsequent chapters trace the development of the mothers' movements, other women leaders, and the activities of these groups and protesters after the Second World War.

Far right women emerged from a tradition of political and social activity stretching back into the early nineteenth century. Women had always been involved in the abolitionist, temperance, and purity crusades of earlier eras. Once they earned the right to vote, disaffection about the process along with the realization that a ballot oftentimes failed to achieve desired results presented women with a quandary, one they resolved by once again falling back on their traditional roles as mothers and as keepers of the country's moral strength. And they continued to form groups in the 1920s, groups that responded to the burning issues of the day. Prohibition, immigration, voting, and declining public morals infuriated millions of traditional women who thought that America was sinking into a cesspool of immorality. It was from this tradition, and from some of the specific groups of the 1920s, that the far right females emerged to rail against blacks, Jews, Roosevelt, and the war.

Women moved to the far right for different reasons. Professional agitator Elizabeth Dilling began her crusade against communism because of a trip she took to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. She saw neglected churches, starving children, and heard sinister plans of a communist invasion of the United States during this visit. Eventually, Dilling linked her anti-communist struggle to a hatred of Jews. Grace Wick, on the other hand, moved into the ranks of the right wing extremists after she lost her job during the Great Depression. Always a political activist, Wick initially welcomed the arrival of Roosevelt in the White House. When the New Deal failed to work for her personally, she turned on the president with a venom instantly recognizable to students of the far right. Wick blamed "Jewish communists" for her misfortune and began corresponding with other extremist leaders. By using Dilling and Wick as case studies, Benowitz shows how different personalities subscribing to different issues could arrive at the same political views.

The issues that drove thousands of women into the arms of the far right were numerous and far ranging. The author employs several sources, including women's magazines and letters written to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to distill female concerns of the period. One magazine ran a piece about women's lives in Nazi Germany, possibly leading some readers to conclude that life in a totalitarian society offered certain benefits for traditional mothers. Other articles raised debate about the New Deal, the internal threat of communism, anti-Semitism, Christian evangelicalism, immigration, racial integration, and birth control. The public forums these magazines provided forced many women to take positions on these issues or to redefine their previous attitudes. Those women who held extremist positions built associations outside of the mainstream to air their views.
Women like Dilling, Agnes Waters, Lyrl Clark Van Hyning, and Catharine Curtis formed numerous organizations to promote their personal opinions. Benowitz defines at least some of these figures as feminists, as women who sought to expand the economic, social, and political spheres of women beyond the home. The author, while cognizant of the extreme anti-Semitic and racist propositions of these individuals, looks beyond the heated rhetoric to argue that these women served an important function. Just as mainstream and progressive women expanded the roles of their sex, so did far right women. Benowitz goes so far as to propose that Dilling, Clark Van Hyning, and Waters laid the groundwork that future female conservatives would use to air their grievances. Most of the conservatives to come completely rejected the extreme views of their predecessors. Phyllis Schlafly, for example, rejected these mothers' anti-Jewish attitudes while organizing her movements using similar techniques.

A central problem of Benowitz's book concerns feminism, specifically what does or does not constitute feminism and how said term applies to these extremist activists. While almost all of these figures worked closely with like-minded men, they often refused to form concrete ties with male dominated organizations. Keeping Gerald L.K. Smith, Father Coughlin, and other prominent far right men separate from female movements does resemble in more than one way a decidedly feminist mindset. So does the mothers' belief that their groups gave women an outlet for protecting distinctly female prerogatives such as motherhood and homemaking. Benowitz believes that far right women ultimately presented an exception to feminism because they only accepted white, Christian followers who were willing to accept without question the viewpoints of their leaders. Historian Glen Jeansonne in his treatment of female extremists presents a more compelling argument in favor of defining these women as feminists. He questions the very meaning of feminism and calls for a reassessment of the term that will embrace these women. Ultimately, June Melby Benowitz's book is a welcome addition to what was once a little understood facet of 1930s and 1940s protest. Certainly, other books on this fascinating topic will soon follow. ... Read more