Synopses & Reviews
Enriched by the wealth of new research into women's history,
No Small Courage offers a lively chronicle of American experience, charting women's lives and experiences with fascinating immediacy from the precolonial era to the present. Individual stories and primary sources-including letters, diaries, and news reports-animate this history of the domestic, professional, and political efforts of American women.
John Demos begins the book with a discussion of Native American women confronting colonization. Leading historians illuminate subsequent eras of social and political change-including Jane Kamensky on women's lives in the colonial period, Karen Manners Smith on the rising tide of political activity by women in the Progressive Era, Sarah Jane Deutsch on the transition of 1920s optimism to the harsh realities of the Great Depression, Elaine Tyler May on the challenges to a gender-defined social order encouraged by World War II, and William H. Chafe on the women's movement and the struggle for political equality since the 1960s. The authors vividly relate such events as Anne Hutchinson's struggle for religious expression in Puritan Massachusetts, former slave Harriet Tubman's perilous efforts to free others in captivity, Rosa Parks's resistance to segregation in the South, and newfound opportunities for professional and personal self-determination available as a result of decades of protest. Dozens of archival illustrations add to the human dimensions of the authoritative text.
No Small Courage dynamically captures the variety and significance of American women's experience, demonstrating that the history of our nation cannot be fully understood without focusing on changes in women's lives.
Review
"Illuminating and lively personal narratives.... Succeeds in giving a sense of how women have been 'active agents' in American history."--The New York Times Book Review
"Details a rich store of female accomplishment over several centuries."--The Baltimore Sun
"Significant additions to the history of women in the United States."--Dallas Morning News
"Thoughtful, broad ranging, and engagingly written. A significant addition to literature in women's history. Accessible and inclusive, it will undoubtedly be an enormously useful volume for years to come."--Florida Historical Quarterly
Review
Thoughtful broad ranging, and engagingly written, No Small Courage clearly achieves its purpose: a single volume text for an entry-level college course in women's history. The greatest strengths of the text are its inclusiveness and clarity. This is a significant addition to the literature in women's history. Accessible and inclusive, it will undoubtedly be an enormously useful volume for years to come."
Book Review Synopsis
Edited by acclaimed women's historian Nancy F. Cott, and boasting contributions by an illustrious group of renowned scholars, No Small Courage offers the finest account available of women's struggle for equality in America.
Attractively illustrated, with over a hundred historical pictures taken from a wide variety of sources, including newspapers and family scrapbooks, this superb history offers a vivid chronicle written by such noted historians as John Demos, Jane Kamensky, Sarah Deutsch, Elaine Tyler May, and William H. Chafe. Starting with Native American women confronting colonization, the book introduces a parade of remarkable women -- Abigail Adams and Phyllis Wheatley, Margaret Fuller and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ida B. Wells and Jane Addams, Mary McLeod Bethune and Zora Neale Hurston, and Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. The contributors focus on real-life stories and primary sources -- including letters, diaries, and news reports -- to give readers a first-hand sense of how women lived and worked throughout our history. We see Anne Hutchinson's struggle to create a public role for herself in colonial Massachusetts, Emma Willard's fight for better educational opportunities for women, former slave Harriet Tubman's perilous efforts to free others in captivity, and Rosa Park's resistance to segregation in the South.
Boasting lovely illustrations, lively anecdotes, and skillfully written narratives by leading experts, No Small Courage captures the variety and importance of American women's experience, demonstrating that the history of our nation cannot be fully understood without focusing on changes in women's lives.
About the Author
Nancy F. Cott is Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University, and the director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of
The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, and
Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation, among other books.