Science History Women

Rosalind Franklin was what can only be called an overlooked genius. Although she was not fully credited for the feat at the time, her work led to major breakthroughs in our understanding of DNA. In fact, she took the first X-ray photo of DNA in all of its double helix glory. By the time her former colleagues were being showered with accolades for results they made at least partially based on her findings, Franklin would not be around to see it. Sadly, it’s believed that her use of X-ray equipment gave her terminal cancer, cutting her life short at age 37.

The first comprehensive history of Hollywood's high-flying career women during the studio era, Nobody's Girl Friday covers the impact of the executives, producers, editors, writers, agents, designers, directors, and actresses who shaped Hollywood film production and style, led their unions, climbed to the top during the war, and fought the blacklist. Based on a decade of archival research, author J. E. Smyth uncovers a formidable generation working within the American film industry and brings their voices back into the history of Hollywood.

This stimulating collection of essays in an autobiographical framework encompasses Gerda Lerner's theoretical writing and her organizational work in transforming the history profession and in establishing Women's History as a mainstream field.

She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O’Connor’s story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings - doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.

Stephanie Racine narrates Women: Our History, which reexamines history from a female perspective. This audiobook celebrates the numerous important roles women have played in culture and society that are less often told.

Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.

Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little-known aspects of the Civil War: The stories of four courageous women - a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow - who were spies. After shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

These days, swimming may seem like the most egalitarian of pastimes, open to anyone with a swimsuit - but this wasn't always the case. In the 19th century, swimming was exclusively the domain of men, and access to pools was a luxury limited by class. Women were (barely) allowed to swim in the sea, as long as no men were around, but even into the 20th century they could be arrested and fined if they dared dive into a lake. It wasn't until the 1930s that women were finally granted equal access.

Using remarkable new sources, Sarah Bradford has written a timely celebration of a life that was more private than commonly supposed. Revealing new testimony from many of the couple's friends shows the complexities of this apparently very public relationship and of her controversial marriage to Aristotle Onassis. Here is the private Jackie - neglected wife, vigilant mother, and working widow - whose contradictory and fascinating nature is illuminated by all that Bradford has discovered.

Unlike the women who descended on Washington in 2017 to protest the inauguration of President Trump, the women of January 6 did not come as women. They came as Americans, as patriots, as defenders of the republic. They did not wear pink hats. They wore MAGA hats. Their issues were indistinguishable from those of the men in their lives—the rule of law, free and fair elections, and the preservation of constitutional rights. They brought no laundry list of special needs like, say, “reproductive rights,” because they understood that no one was challenging their right to reproduce.

At the height of the Great Depression, Sam Babb, the charismatic basketball coach of tiny Oklahoma Presbyterian College, began dreaming. Like so many others, he wanted a reason to have hope. Traveling from farm to farm, he recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a chance at a better life: a free college education if they would come play for his basketball team, the Cardinals. Despite their fears of leaving home and the sacrifices faced by their families, the women followed Babb and his dream.

This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden - and not always stoic - face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In this book, we encounter the awesome burdens - and the considerable power - of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising - and, all too often, mourning - her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess.

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction, to the horror of many in the legal community. Louisa protested her innocence until the end.

Condoleezza Rice has until now remained a mystery behind an elegant, cool veneer. In this stunning new biography, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller peels back the layers and presents a revelatory portrait of the first Black female secretary of state and President George W. Bush's national security adviser on September 11, 2001. The audiobook relates the personal voyage of a young Black woman out of the segregated American South and also tells the sweeping story of a tumultuous half-century in the nation's history.

Roberts presents a colorful blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women's public roles and private responsibilities.

From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things comes a collection of moving meditations on the beauty and complexity of women’s lives and roles, revealed in the things they hold, and on remorse, joy, ancestry, and memory. Ultimately, she reveals that many of the things we hold dear—as well as those that burden or haunt us—remain constant and connect us from generation to generation.

The idea that medicine is gender-neutral is a myth. This isn't inflammatory rhetoric; it's simply true. From the way pain is felt, to how heart attacks are diagnosed, to the very role society plays in the health of the body, the medical landscape in place today is one that was designed for, and by, men. This audiobook is about all the ways medicine is not gender-neutral, from research to treatment to diagnosis. Throughout history, flawed mindsets have paved the way for sub-par treatment, and the prevailing attitudes that exist today have had terrible repercussions for women.

A heroine for our times, Etta Lemon campaigned for 50 years against the worldwide slaughter of birds for extravagantly feathered hats. Her legacy is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (the RSPB), grown from an all-female pressure group of 1889 with the splendidly simple pledge: Wear No Feathers. Etta’s long battle against ‘murderous millinery’ triumphed with the Plumage Act of 1921 - but her legacy has been eclipsed by the more glamorous campaign for the vote, led by the elegantly plumed Emmeline Pankhurst.

An unprecedented look inside a deadly and obscenely wealthy branch of the Italian mafia and the electrifying story of the women who risked everything to bring them down. The Calabrian Mafia - known as the ’Ndrangheta - is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls 70 percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals - supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists - and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the EU.

Cokie returns with Founding Mothers, an intimate look at the passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families and country proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.