Women's History

Women's history books, for Women's History Month and beyond.
Updated September 19, 2022
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The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Skloot, Rebecca
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE "MOST...
Hidden figures : the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race
Lee Shetterly, Margot.
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestseller -WINNER OF ANISFIELD-WOLF AWARD FOR NONFICTION -WINNER BLACK CAUCUS OF AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION BEST NONFICTION BOOK -WINNER NAACP IMAGE AWARD BEST NONFICTION BOOK -WINNER NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES,...
The radium girls : the dark story of America's shining women
Moore, Kate (Writer and editor)
Paper Book
A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts Bestseller! "The glowing ghosts of the radium girls haunt us still." --NPR Books  Discover the gripping and inspiring true story of The Radium Girls, a groundbreaking work by acclaimed author Kate Moore....
The witches : Salem, 1692
Schiff, Stacy.
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a...
A midwife's tale : the life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary, 1785-1812
Ulrich, Laurel.
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER.Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine,"A truly talented historian unravels the fascinating life of a community that is so foreign, and yet so similar to our own" (The New York Times Book Review). Between 1785 and 1812 a...
Sex with kings : 500 years of adultery, power, rivalry, and revenge
Herman, Eleanor
Paper Book
Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman's Sex with Kings takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe's most powerful monarchs. Alive with...
Code girls : the untold story of the American women code breakers of World War II
Mundy, Liza
Paper Book
The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the American women who secretly served as codebreakers during World War II--a "prodigiously researched and engrossing" (New York Times) book that "shines a light on a hidden chapter of American history" (Denver Post).
Liar, temptress, soldier, spy : four women undercover in the Civil War
Abbott, Karen
Paper Book
Karen Abbott, the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and "pioneer of sizzle history" (USA Today), tells the spellbinding true story of four women who risked everything to become spies during the Civil War. Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet...
Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500
Henrietta Leyser
Paper Book
"Medieval Women looks at a thousand years of English history, as it affected - and was made by - women." "The book opens with the coming of the Anglo-Saxons to England in the fifth century and looks at the variety of sources that can throw light on the lives and contributions to their society of...
Women of the Left Bank
Shari Benstock
Paper Book
Now available in a durable paperback edition, Shari Benstock's critically acclaimed, best-selling Women of the Left Bank is a fascinating exploration of the lives and works of some two dozen American, English, and French women whose talent shaped the Paris expatriate experience in the century's...
Wayward lives, beautiful experiments : intimate histories of social upheaval
Hartman, Saidiya V.
Paper Book
In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer...
The woman they could not silence : one woman, her incredible fight for freedom, and the men who tried to make her disappear
Moore, Kate (Writer and editor)
Paper Book
From the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Radium Girls comes another dark and dramatic but ultimately uplifting tale of a forgotten woman hero whose inspirational journey sparked lasting change for women's rights and exposed injustices that still...
A black women's history of the United States
Berry, Daina Ramey
Paper Book
The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this "groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States" (Ibram X. Kendi)-the perfect companion to An Indigenous People's History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the...
All that she carried : the journey of Ashley's sack, a black family keepsake
Miles, Tiya
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a "deeply layered and insightful" (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out...
A perfect union : Dolley Madison and the creation of the American nation
Allgor, Catherine
Paper Book
An extraordinary American comes to life in this vivid, groundbreaking portrait of the early days of the republic - and the birth of modern politics When the roar of the Revolution had finally died down, a new generation of American politicians was summoned to the Potomac to assemble the nation's...
Stranger in the Shogun's city : a Japanese woman and her world
Stanley, Amy
Paper Book
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman...
The hidden lives of Tudor women : a social history
Norton, Elizabeth (Historian)
Paper Book
The Tudor period conjures up images of queens and noblewomen in elaborate court dress; of palace intrigue and dramatic politics. But if you were a woman, it was also a time when death during childbirth was rife; when marriage was usually a legal contract, not a matter for love, and the education you...
Vanguard : how Black women broke barriers, won the vote, and insisted on equality for all
Jones, Martha S.
Paper Book
The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power -- and how it transformed America. In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this...
Women in white coats : how the first women doctors changed the world of medicine
Campbell, Olivia
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive health care. ...
Mutinous women : how French convicts became founding mothers of the Gulf Coast
DeJean, Joan E.
Paper Book
The secret history of the rebellious Frenchwomen who were exiled to colonial Louisiana and found power in the Mississippi Valley In 1719, a ship named La Mutine (the mutinous woman), sailed from the French port of Le Havre, bound for the Mississippi. It was loaded with...
Votes for women : a portrait of persistence
Lemay, Kate Clarke
Paper Book
A richly illustrated history of women's suffrage in the United States that highlights underrecognized activists Marking the centenary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Votes for Women is the first richly illustrated book to reveal the history and...
Feminism for the Americas : the making of an international human rights movement
Marino, Katherine M.
Paper Book
This book chronicles the dawn of the global movement for women's rights in the first decades of the twentieth century. The founding mothers of this movement were not based primarily in the United States, however, or in Europe. Instead, Katherine M. Marino introduces readers to a cast of remarkable...

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