Women

At thirty-two years old, everything in Nona Willis Aronowitz’s life, and in America, was in disarray. Her marriage was falling apart. Her nuclear family was slipping away. Her heart and libido were both in overdrive....

A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine....

The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space....

From the best-selling author of The Radium Girls comes another dark and dramatic but ultimately uplifting tale of a forgotten woman whose inspirational journey sparked lasting change for women’s rights and exposed injustices that still resonate today....

As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium....

The untold story of the three intelligent and glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and of the conference’s fateful reverberations in the waning days of World War II....

A scientific journey to the center of the new female body....

The Dressmakers of Auschwitz presents a powerful chronicle of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes at an extraordinary fashion workshop created within one of the most notorious WWII death camps....

From award-winning author Paulina Bren comes the remarkable history of New York’s most famous residential hotel and the women who stayed there, including Grace Kelly, Sylvia Plath, and Joan Didion....

This engaging memoir, originally published 1970, relates Ida B. Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice....

A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism - from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington - Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect....

A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith’s intimate history of Black women’s music as the foundational story of American pop....

One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters....

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule....

Catherine Musemeche weaves together science, biography, and military history in the compelling story of an unsung woman who had a dramatic effect on the U.S. Navy’s success against Japan in WWII, creating an intelligence-gathering juggernaut based on the new science of oceanography....

In this electrifying exposé, Hayley Nolan explores for the first time the full, uncensored evidence of Anne Boleyn’s life and relationship with Henry VIII, revealing the shocking suppression of a powerful woman....

Glamour, danger, liberation: In a Mad Men era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out and wanted up....

Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how 19th-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals....

On a sunny morning in 1939, a phalanx of 867 women - housewives, doctors, opera singers, politicians, prostitutes - was marched through the woods 50 miles north of Berlin....

For fans of Code Girls and Hidden Figures, Proving Ground is the untold, World War II-era story of the six American women who programmed the world's first modern computer....

From Rebecca Traister, the New York Times best-selling author of All the Single Ladies, comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement....

Janina Ramirez presents a groundbreaking reappraisal of medieval femininity, revealing why women have been written out of history and why it matters....

All the Single Ladies is a remarkable portrait of contemporary American life and how we got here, through the lens of the single American woman....

Strawberry daiquiris. Skinny martinis. Vodka sodas with lime. These are the cocktails that come in sleek-stemmed glasses, bright colors and fruity flavors—these are the Girly Drinks....

In one of the most underestimated - and challenging - positions in the world, the first lady of the United States must be many things....

At thirty-two years old, everything in Nona Willis Aronowitz’s life, and in America, was in disarray. Her marriage was falling apart. Her nuclear family was slipping away. Her heart and libido were both in overdrive. Embroiled in an era of fear, reckoning, and reimagining, her assumptions of what “sexual liberation” meant were suddenly up for debate.

Running from Bondage, Karen Cook Bell's enlightening and original contribution to the study of slave resistance in eighteenth-century America, explores the individual and collective lives of these women and girls of diverse circumstances, while also providing details about what led them to escape. She demonstrates that there were in fact two wars being waged during the Revolutionary Era: a political revolution for independence from Great Britain and a social revolution for emancipation and equality in which Black women played an active role. 

After the end of World War II, the race for technological supremacy sped on. Top-secret research into ballistics and computing, begun during the war to aid those on the front lines, continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer—better known as the ENIAC. Proving Ground restores these women to their rightful place as technological revolutionaries.

You won't be familiar with every one of the huge array of women featured in this book, but all, familiar or not, leave unanswered questions behind them—from Cleopatra to Ruth Ellis, from Boudicca to Bonnie Parker, from Lady Caroline Lamb to Moll Cutpurse, from Jezebel to Ava Gardner. The risqué, the adventurous and the outrageous, the downright nasty and the downright desperate—all human (female!) life is here. Wicked? Misunderstood? Naïve? Foolish? Predatory? Manipulative? Or just out of their time? Listen and decide.

In 1943, Kathleen, then thirty, was a nurse-in-training at the Blackburn Royal Infirmary. For the next three years, she kept a meticulous diary of her day-to-day existence, leaving behind a vivid record of the real-time concerns of a busy, thoughtful woman on the frontline of the war at home. Kathleen’s days were never the same. She writes in clear and lively prose about life in the hospital: of her fellow nurses, her patients, about death and dying, and the progress of the war as wounded soldiers returned from Normandy in the summer of 1944. 

Before Barbie, the Gibson Girl epitomized female fashion and beauty of her era. She was the image every woman aspired to in Progressive America . She not only influenced fashion but changed all of American society. But, who exactly was this elusive Gibson girl?

In 1955, Katharine Clark, the first American woman wire reporter behind the Iron Curtain, saw something none of her male colleagues did. What followed became one of the most unusual adventure stories of the Cold War. While on assignment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Clark befriended a man who, by many definitions, was her enemy. But she saw something in Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Communist leader who dared to question the ideology he helped establish, that made her want to work with him. It became the assignment of her life.

Sound Within Sound is the impassioned and exhilarating story of the composers who dared to challenge the conventional world of classical music in the 20th century. Traversing the globe from Ethiopia and the Philippines to Mexico, Russia, and beyond, Kate Molleson tells the stories of ten figures that altered the course of musical history, only to be sidelined and denied recognition during an era that systemically favoured certain sounds—and people—over others.

In 16th-century Europe, two women came to hold all the power, against all the odds. They were Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici. One a Virgin Queen who ruled her kingdom alone, and the other a clandestine leader who used her children to shape the dynasties of Europe, much has been written about these iconic women. But nothing has been said of their complicated relationship: 30 years of friendship, competition and conflict that changed the face of Europe.

The Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical narratives by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. This audiobook vividly describes how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual skills of women astronomers were still not enough to enable them to pry open doors of opportunity for much of the twentieth century. Here are the stories of the tough and determined women who flung the doors wide open.