by Gail Collins
Vikings
virginity
voting rights
see also suffrage, female
Wagner, Gwen
Wainwright, Jonathan
Wakatsuki, Jeanne
Wald, Lillian
Walker, C. J.
Walker, Lelia
Walker, Madame C. J. (Sarah Breedlove)
Walker, Mrs.
Walsh, Lillian
Ward, Lester
Ward, Lizzie
War Department, U.S.
Wardwell, Anne
Warner, Fanny
Warner, Oliver
Warner, Susan
Warren, Earl
Washington, George
Waterbury, Maria
Watson, John
Watson, Thomas
Weld, Rev. Thomas
Weld, Theodore
Wells-Barnett, Ida
West
cowgirls in
domestic life in
entertainment in
gender imbalance in
immigrants in
jobs in
Mexicans and Native Americans in
prostitutes in
wagon trains to
West, Francis
West, Harriet
West, Mae
Wetamo
Wetherbee, Nellie
Wharton, Edith
Wheatley, John
Wheatley, Phillis
Wheatley, Susanna
Wheeler, Ned
White, Fanny
White, John
White, Lynn, Jr.
White, William Allen
Whitman, Marcus
Whitman, Narcissa Prentiss
Wide, Wide World, The (Warner)
Willard, Emma
Willard, Frances
Williams, Abigail
Williams, Roger
Williams, Sylvanie
Willis, Nathaniel
Wills, Helen
Wilson, Luzena
Wilson, Mason
Wilson, Paul
Wilson, Sarah
Wilson, Woodrow
Winnemucca, Sarah
Winslow, Anna Green
Winslow, Rose
Winter, Irwin
Winthrop, Governor and Mrs.
Wiswell, Rebecca
witchcraft
Witherspoon, Betsey
Women and Economics (Gilman)
Women in the Nineteenth Century (Fuller)
Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)
Women’s Anti-Slavery Convention
Women’s Army Corps (WAC)
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
women’s liberation movement
Women’s Political Council
women’s rights
Grimke sisters and
in West
see also suffrage, female
Wood, Mrs. William
Wood, Natalie
Wood, William
Woodhull, Victoria
Woodward, Charlotte
World Anti-Slavery Convention
World War I
World War II
immigrants affected by
military women in
working women in
Wormeley, Katherine
Worthington, Amanda
Wright, Ellen
Wright, Fanny
Wright, Martha Coffin
Wylie, Philip
Yale, Madame
Yeardley, Francis
Yeardley, George
Young, Mrs. Samuel
Zmuda, Dorothy
About the Author
GAIL COLLINS, a columnist for the New York Times, was the first woman ever to serve as editorial page editor for the paper. Previously, she was a member of the Times editorial board, and a columnist for the New York Daily News and New York Newsday.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise for Gail Collins and America’s Women
“In a deft and entertaining work of historical synthesis, Ms. Collins draws on the new literature of American women’s history to weave a rich narrative of four centuries worth of women’s experiences, one that challenges conventional assumptions about the past and forces readers to think in new ways not just about women but about who we are as a nation and how we came to be.”
—Ellen Chesler, New York Times
“What a pageant! Gail Collins’s America’s Women sweeps across four centuries of the history of women in America in one seamless take. Collins has gathered material from scholars and writers in an ambitious…and highly readable volume.”
—Bettyann Holtzmann Kelves, Los Angeles Times
“With America’s Women Gail Collins has changed the face and gender of American history. From the colonial women to the suffragettes to the modern feminists, it is rare to come across a book that is this expansive, important, and a joy to read. America’s Women is a major achievement.”
—Wendy Wasserstein
“Collins has a genius for identifying fascinating, provocative facts that help us imagine the daily lives of women in the past.”
—New York Newsday
“This is an astonishing book. Like every other son, husband, and father, I thought I knew about women. Turns out I didn’t. There is the shock of belated recognition on every page.”
—Richard Reeves
“A fascinating compendium.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“America’s Women is a one-stop account of the lives and times of the second sex in the U.S….There’s a wealth of information…. Collins’s accessible, entertaining style makes ita brisk, enjoyable read.”
—BusinessWeek
“At last the perfect American Herstory, or herstories. Gail Collins has followed the trail from Eleanor Dare’s voyage to Virginia to Betty Friedan’s march down Fifth Avenue, stopping along the way to talk about suffrage and fashion, birth control and corsets. It’s a treasure.”
—Ellen Goodman
“Written in the same lively prose that characterized Collins’s work as a columnist for New York Newsday and the New York Times before her 2001 promotion, America’s Women stands out from other historical surveys.”
—Time Out (New York)
“America’s Women is the product of a powerful and consistent intelligence and trenchant wit. Collins has created a remarkable history…. A triumphant, kaleidoscopic self-definition of American women through their actions and achievements.”
—Book magazine
“Written in a lively, readable style, America’s Women is an enthralling social history woven around profiles of women you’ve heard of and women you haven’t.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Enormously entertaining and illuminating.”
—Boston Globe
“Provocative and witty.”
—Glamour
“Though America’s Women is an easy and entertaining read, it also fulfills the radical promise of women’s history.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Collins illuminates history with the real lives of women both famous and obscure.”
—St. Petersburg Times
“Fascinating…. Collins has written a book for even the most history-phobic…enlightening those who think of history only in terms of wars and other exploits of men.”
—Hartford Courant
“Gail Collins, the savvy New York Times journalist and editor, proves herself to be an insightful student of American women’s history.”
—Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Cornell University, author of The Body Project
“This book is a delight. All the famous women are here, but they share the stage, as they should, with the ordinary women of every era who survived their roles as ‘dolls, drudges, helpmates.’ Collins makes each and every one of them a heroine.”
—Carol Berkin, author of First Generations: Women in Colonial America and A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the Ameri
can Constitution
“Gail Collins knows how to tell a story. Lively, witty, and dead serious, this wise history is a fascinating read.”
—Linda K. Kerber, professor of history, University of Iowa, and author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies
“Gail Collins’s book is the best survey of American women’s history we have. It is a rich and absorbing story, carried along by humor, deep feeling, and superb historical intelligence.”
—Christine Stansell, professor of history, Princeton University, and author of American Moderns
“Illuminating cultural history of American women…. Informative and entertaining.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A compelling social history…. Fully accessible and thoroughly enjoyable.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Collins offers a fast-paced and entertaining narrative history of American women.”
—Library Journal
“In a vibrant history of American women that is as vast and varied as the nation itself, Collins elegantly and eruditely celebrates the hard-won victories, overwhelming obstacles, and selfless contributions of a captivating array of influential women.”
—Booklist
“Collins offers a comprehensive, beautifully narrated history of America as seen through the eyes of women, famous and otherwise. She achieves the rare feat of presenting an exhaustively researched history that isn’t exhausting to read.”
—BookPage
ALSO BY GAIL COLLINS
Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics
The Millennium Book (with Dan Collins)
Copyright
Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the excerpt from “Rosie the Riveter,” lyrics and music by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. Copyright © 1942 (renewed 1970) John J. Loeb Company and Music Sales Corporation in the U.S.A. Rights for the world outside the U.S.A. controlled by Famous Music Corporation. Exclusive licensee for John J. Loeb Company: Fred Ahlert Music Corporation. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
AMERICA’S WOMEN. Copyright © 2003 by Gail Collins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition January 2007 ISBN 9780061739224
Version 02282014
The Library of Congress has catalogued the previous edition as follows:
Collins, Gail.
America’s women / Gail Collins—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-018510-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers New Zealand
Unit D, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
