Defining Documents: Women's Rights

Thursday, August 23, 2018 6:11:35 PM
“A spectacular survey of gender concerns, Salem’s document series on women’s rights highlights major challenges to male supremacy. Volume 1 opens on the Seneca Falls declaration and follows the arguments of the giants of feminism-Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, and Susan B. Anthony-then progresses to Jane Adams, Margaret Sanger, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Volume 2 brings the collection through second-wave feminism to the present with the commentary of figures like Betty Friedman, Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton, and Angela Davis. Essential to the documents, a time line details progress from the era of Joan of Arc in the early Renaissance to the present. Indexing connects the reader, teacher, and researcher with gender roles, Brown v. Board of Education, the vital voices of Barbara Jordan and Faye Wattleton, and the ERA. Tutorial sidebars address social themes-Jim Crow, caste, tenements, and race decadence. The balance of text, commentary, and illustrations guides the student of women’s rights to the heart of issues of equal pay, child custody, abortion, and antiwar, antiviolence initiatives. This valuable set organizes the basics of women’s historical advances. Highly recommended for public, high-school, and college libraries.”
-Booklist

"This two-volume set contains 63 articles focused on particular primary sources related to women’s history, particularly women’s struggles for suffrage and equality. There are four sections in the two volumes. Precursors, section 1, starts with a 15th-century letter from Joan of Arc to the King of England. Among the remaining 6 articles in this section, are Abigail Adams’s famous “Remember the Ladies” letter to her husband. There are 24 articles in Suffrage and Sensibility, part 2. Here users will find documents from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, Sojourner Truth, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and Emma Goldman. Part 3, Equality Now!, offers documents by Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir, and Gloria Steinem, the founding statement of the National Organization of Women, and the text of Title IX and Roe v. Wade. The 12 articles in the last part, The Personal Is Political, include Anita Hill’s opening statement at the Senate confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurrence in Stenberg, Attorney General of Nebraska, v. Carhart. As with all the other titles in the Defining Documents series, the articles in this title include a summary overview, an explanation of the defining moment, an author biography, document analysis, and essential themes. A variety of documents are analyzed—pamphlets, essays, a constitutional amendment, letters, speeches, court decisions, court decisions, and book excerpts. Well-placed illustrations supplement the material, and each article includes a bibliography and suggestions for further reading. Appendixes include a document timeline, web resources, a bibliography, and an index. These volumes will help students learn how to closely read primary sources. It is important to note that, despite the title, this set is largely focused on American women’s history."
-ARBA