Books for the Remarkable Women in Your Life

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.

A vivid narrative of the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote, framed by the demonstration known as The Great Suffrage Parade.

The Great Suffrage Parade was the first civil rights march to use the nation's capital as a backdrop. Despite sixty years of relentless campaigning by suffrage organizations, by 1913 only six states allowed women to vote. Then Alice Paul came to Washington, D.C. She planned a grand spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration - marking the beginning of a more aggressive strategy on the part of the women's suffrage movement. Groups of women protested and picketed outside the White House, and some were thrown into jail. Newspapers across the nation covered their activities. These tactics finally led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Author Rebecca Boggs Roberts narrates the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote.