Books for the Remarkable Women in Your Life

Author Kathy Benjamin accompanies the pioneering women of the Lone Star State's funeral business.

The intimate task of caring for the dead had long fallen under women's sphere of responsibilities. But after the Civil War, the sudden popularity of embalming offered new financial opportunities to men who set up as undertakers, pushing women out of their traditional role. In Texas, from the 1880s to the 1930s, women slowly regained their place by the bier. Many worked while pregnant or raising children. Most shouldered the additional weight of personal tragedies and persistent sexism. All brought comfort to the bereaved in the isolation of the Texas frontier, kept its cities free of deadly disease and revolutionized an industry that was just coming into its own.

Experience the history of Rhode Island and learn about the Ocean State's most fascinating and wild women.

Read of Mercy Brown, a nineteen-year-old consumption victim who was thought to be a vampire and whose body was exhumed and discovered with blood in the heart. There was Goody Seager, accused of infesting her neighbor's cheese with maggots by using witchcraft, and Tall ""Dutch"" Kattern of Block Island, an opium-eating fortune teller whose curse, legend says, set a ship aflame after its crew cast her ashore. Hear of the revolutionaries, like Julia Ward Howe, who invented Mother's Day and wrote the words to ""The Battle Hymn of the Republic,"" and religious reformer Anne Hutchinson, said to be the inspiration for Hawthorne's heroine in The Scarlet Letter, in these thrilling tales from author M.E. Reilly-McGreen.

The full account of the 18th-century hanging of a school teacher is detailed in detailed in Carolyn Marvin's dramatic tale.

On a cold December morning in 1768, thirty-one-year-old Ruth Blay approached the gallows erected for her execution. Standing on the high ground in the northwest corner of what is now Portsmouth's old South Cemetery, she would have had a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea. The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth's story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth's life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth's moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her readers come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.

In these pages, rediscover the legend of Diana of the Dunes...and learn the truth.

In the fall of 1915, Alice Gray traded her life in Chicago for a solitary journey in the remote sand hills of northwest Indiana along Lake Michigan. Living in a fisherman's shack, she measured herself against nature rather than society's rigid conventions. Her audacity so bewitched reporters and a curious public that she became a legend in her own time--she became ""Diana of the Dunes."" Nearly a century later, the story is still a popular folktale, but questions remain. Who was Alice Gray? Why did this Phi Beta Kappa scholar leave Chicago? What happened to her soul mate, Paul Wilson? In this first-ever book about Diana of the Dunes, the mystery of Alice Gray is revealed by those who knew her and through new research. Excerpts from her dunes diary are published here for the first time since 1918. In these pages, rediscover the legend of Diana of the Dunes...and learn the truth.

A fascinating look at the brave belles of Missouri!

Wives, sisters, daughters, lovers, friends, and mothers—they risked their lives and their freedom to give aid and comfort to their menfolk. In spite of the danger, they persevered in feeding, clothing, and sheltering the guerrillas. These courageous women of every age and station acted as essential go-betweens, scouts, spies, guides, and mail handlers. They even received stolen property for their Confederate brothers. Though often arrested or banished from their home state of Missouri, many gave false oaths in order to return to their tasks. The dedication of these women is documented through their own diaries and other primary sources.

In 1984, Vanessa Williams broke the race barrier to become Miss America, but she was not the first Black woman to wear a pageant crown.

Black beauty pageants created a distinctive and celebrated cultural tradition during some of the most dismal times in the country's racial history. With the rise of the civil rights and Black Pride movements, pageantry also represented a component of social activism. Professor Kimberly Pellum explores this glamourous and profound history with contributions by dozens of former contestants who share their personal experiences.

Victorine Quille Adams was a Baltimore native and the first African American woman elected to the city council. Born in 1912, she lived through stringent segregation, racial violence and economic turbulence

Victorine Quille Adams was a Baltimore native and the first African American woman elected to the city council. Born in 1912, she lived through stringent segregation, racial violence and economic turbulence.

Educated at Morgan State and Coppin State Universities, she took to the classroom and enriched the lives of her students. In 1946, she founded the Colored Women's Democratic Campaign Committee to educate African American women about the vote and the power of the ballot box. In concert with fellow educators Mary McLeod Bethune, Kate Sheppard and Dr. Delores Hunt, she persisted in educating and empowering voters throughout her life. Author Ida E. Jones reveals the story of this civic leader and her crusade for equity for all people in Baltimore.

Prudery, Polygamy and Politics

Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon was no hands-on-the-plow pioneer. She was no stereotypical polygamous wife. Nor was she a prim lady who blushed at the word "legs." Victorian Mormons were proud to lead the way in empowering women. "Verily the world progresseth," exclaimed the Deseret Evening News on March 17, 1869, celebrating a Congressional bill to give Utah women the vote. But the federal intention to have female suffrage in Utah destroy polygamy failed. The 1882 Edmunds Act made "cohabitation" a felony. To protect her polygamous husband, she fled to England with their infant daughter. Upon her return, she reestablished her medical practice and opened Utah's first training school for nurses. Nominated by local Democrats, Mattie ran against her husband for state senate in 1896 - beating him by four thousand votes. Author Joan Jacobson chronicles an extraordinary life remarkably relevant for today.

Fiery suffragettes, unconventional first ladies, and rebellious socialites turning up their noses at ladylike behavior, these pioneering women of Washington, D.C., shattered the expectations of a tightly-corseted society.

Escaped slave turned spy Mary Touvestre risked it all to scuttle Confederate plans to break the Union blockade. Trading petticoats for trousers to work at the Union hospitals, Dr. Mary E. Walker was both the only female Medal of Honor recipient and the possessor of a police record for impersonating a man. During Prohibition, First Lady Florence Harding hosted jazz soirees and served up cocktails in the White House gardens. From pioneering photographers and newspaperwomen to enterprising madams and soldiers in disguise, author Canden Schwantes introduces readers to the decidedly daring and wild women of the capital.

Discover Maryland's legacy of daring women who made their mark on history as spies, would-be queens and fiery suffragettes.

Maryland's history is punctuated by women who refused to be forgotten. Sarah Wilson escaped indentured servitude in Frederick by impersonating the queen's sister. In Cumberland, Sallie Pollock smuggled letters for top Confederate officials. Baltimore journalist Marguerite Harrison snuck into Russia to report conditions there after World War I. From famous figures like Harriet Tubman to unsung heroines like ""Lady Law"" Violet Hill Whyte, author Lauren R. Silberman introduces Maryland's most tenacious and adventurous women.

In Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio, author Jane Ann Turzillo recounts the misdeeds of ten dark-hearted women who refused to play by the rules.

They unleashed their most base impulses using axes, guns, poison and more. You'll meet Perry's Velma West, a mere slip of a girl who was unfortunately too near a hammer during an argument. New Philadelphia's Ellen Athey, no lady herself, had a similar problem with an axe. Ardell Quinn, who operated the longest-running brothel in Cleveland, would simply argue that she was a good businesswoman. Grim? Often. Entertaining? Deliciously so.