Staff Picks: Recommendations from the OIT Library

From the Preface. Legends and myth surround almost all the famous women in the American past, and capsule summaries of their careers contained in textbooks, and general accounts often distort their importance or hide their significance behind a veil of half-truths. More has been written about Jane Addams than about most women in American history, both by scholarly and popular authors, but still she remains an engima. The image that comes through in the popular accounts of her life is that of a precocious child who became a saintly woman. She founded Hull House in a spirit of self-sacrifice and went on to lead movements for humanitarian reform and peace (p. ix).

A biography of the fugitive slave turned "conductor" on the Underground Railroad describes Tubman's youth in the South, her escape to Philadelphia, her efforts to liberate slaves, and her work for the Union Army.

Biography of disappeared flier, Amelia Earhart, discussing her childhood, personal success, marriage to publishing giant George Palmer Putnam, flying, and disappearance in 1937 over the Pacific.

Discover the remarkable life of Hedy Lamarr...
Hedy Lamarr was a rare kind of woman. She was not only a strikingly beautiful actress who took Hollywood by storm in the 1940s, but she was also an inventor—and not just any inventor. Hedy Lamarr’s work with radio frequencies is credited with paving the way for Wi-Fi. It seems that the greatest bomb that this bombshell dropped would only fully explode until the last years of her life because when Lamarr passed away in the year 2000, the computing world was just then mainstreaming many of her ideas.

Sadly, as amazing as her early career was, in later life, Lamarr became reclusive and had very limited contact with the outside world. It is perhaps ironic that it was the ideas of this recluse that would bring so many people together in the modern world of interconnectedness. In this book, we delve deep into the full unvarnished life and legacy of the woman we know as Hedy Lamarr.

In 1962, Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick, and James Watson received the Nobel Prize, but it was Rosalind Franklin's data and photographs of DNA that led to their discovery. Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright, and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.

A biography of Babe Didrikson, who broke records in golf, track and field, and other sports, at a time when there were few opportunities for female athletes.

Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. Straight talking and unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women - indeed, for all strong women. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, she is regarded as a radical of immense and enduring influence; yet unlike them, what is remembered of her consists more of myth than of historical fact. Now, in a masterful blend of scholarship and sympathetic understanding, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter goes beyond the myths, words, and photographs to uncover the life of a complex woman who was born into slavery and died a legend. Inspired by religion, Truth transformed herself from a domestic servant named Isabella into an itinerant Pentecostal preacher; her words of empowerment have inspired black women and poor people the world over to this day. As an abolitionist and a feminist, Truth defied the stereotype of "the slave" as male and "the woman" as white - expounding a fact that still bears repeating: among blacks there are women; among women, there are blacks.

She was the lonely dissenter, committed to following the dictates of her conscience no matter the consequences. Jeannette Rankin, an early leader for woman suffrage and the first woman elected to Congress, crusaded for peace her entire life. "Killing more people won't help matters," she said.

The Montana native was an American icon of extremes in politics, applauded as a beacon of hope by many people and vilified as a traitor by others. Rankin is widely known as the first woman elected to Congress. Lesser known is that she was a historical oddity, standing as the only American to vote against both world wars.

Rankin's public involvement, rooted in the reform movement of the early 1900s, lasted half a century. She was a vigorous participant in the great suffrage campaigns preceding World War I, a critic of war profiteering in the years leading to World War II, and put her name to an antiwar march on the US Capitol in 1968. Soon after she was named "the world's outstanding living feminist."

Rankin left behind a rich legacy of pacifism, born in the belief that women, once they had the right to vote, would make a difference.

Nellie Bly took an undercover journalist assignment to pretend to be insane to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at mental asylums. After a night of practicing deranged expressions in front of a mirror, she checked into a working-class boarding-house where she feigned insanity so well that everyone was convinced. She was then examined by several doctors, who all declared her to be insane, too. Committed to an asylum, Bly experienced its dire conditions firsthand: horrible spoiled food; the patients mistreated and abused; unclean and unsanitary conditions. Furthermore, speaking with her fellow patients, Bly was convinced that some were as sane as she was. After ten days, Bly was released from the asylum with her editor's help and she published her experience in book form as "Ten Days in a Mad-House." It caused a sensation and brought her lasting fame. More importantly, thanks to this book, living conditions for the insane were improved and funds for their care were increased.