Women in the United States, 1830-1945 investigates women's economic, social, political and cultural history, encompassing all ethnic and racial groups and religions. It provides a general introduction to the history of women in industrializing America. Both a history of women and a history of the United States, its chronology is shaped by economic stages and political events. Although there were vast changes in all aspects of women's lives, gender (the social roles imputed to the sexes) continued to define women's (and men's) lives as much in 1945 as it had in 1830.

This collection of twenty-four original essays by leading scholars in American women's history highlights the most recent important scholarship on the key debates and future directions of this popular and contemporary field. Covers the breadth of American Women's history, including the colonial family, marriage, health, sexuality, education, immigration, work, consumer culture, and feminism. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Includes expanded bibliography of titles to guide further research.

A collection of twenty-six of the finest stories by the finest women writers to come out of the U.S. and Canada in the past fifty years. Organized by publication date, authors include Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler, Tama Janowitz, Sandra Cisneros, Mary Gordon, and Alice Walker.

In the popular stereotype of post-World War II America, women abandoned their wartime jobs and contentedly retreated to the home. This work unveils the diversity of postwar women, showing how far women departed from this one-dimensional image.

The seven essays included in this volume move beyond the famed Ashcan School to recover the lesser known work of Robert Henri's women students. The contributors, who include well-known scholars of art history, American studies, and cultural studies demonstrate how these women participated in the "modernizing" of women's roles during this era.

The American women's movement was one of the most influential social movements of the twentieth century. Longstanding ideas and habits came under scrutiny and institutions were changed. Maclean's introduction and collection of primary sources engage students with the most up-to-date scholarship in U.S. women's history.

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). Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

Drawing on war propaganda, popular advertising, voluminous government records, and hundreds of letters and other accounts written by women in the 1940s, Melissa A. McEuen examines how extensively women's bodies and minds became "battlegrounds" in the U.S. fight for victory in World War II. Women were led to believe that the nation's success depended on their efforts--not just on factory floors, but at their dressing tables, bathroom sinks, and laundry rooms. They were to fill their arsenals with lipstick, nail polish, creams, and cleansers in their battles to meet the standards of ideal womanhood touted in magazines, newspapers, billboards, posters, pamphlets and in the rapidly expanding pinup genre. Scrutinized and sexualized in new ways, women understood that their faces, clothes, and comportment would indicate how seriously they took their responsibilities as citizens. McEuen also shows that the wartime rhetoric of freedom, democracy, and postwar opportunity coexisted uneasily with the realities of a racially stratified society. The context of war created and reinforced whiteness, and McEuen explores how African Americans grappled with whiteness as representing the true American identity. Using perspectives of cultural studies and feminist theory, Making War, Making Women offers a broad look at how women on the American home front grappled with a political culture that used their bodies in service of the war effort.

"Eleanor Roosevelt never wanted her husband to run for president. When he won, she . . . went on a national tour to crusade on behalf of women. She wrote a regular newspaper column. She became a champion of women's rights and of civil rights. And she decided to write a book." -- Jill Lepore, from the Introduction "Women, whether subtly or vociferously, have always been a tremendous power in the destiny of the world," Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in It's Up to the Women, her book of advice to women of all ages on every aspect of life. Written at the height of the Great Depression, she called on women particularly to do their part -- cutting costs where needed, spending reasonably, and taking personal responsibility for keeping the economy going. Whether it's the recommendation that working women take time for themselves in order to fully enjoy time spent with their families, recipes for cheap but wholesome home-cooked meals, or America's obligation to women as they take a leading role in the new social order, many of the opinions expressed here are as fresh as if they were written today.