Featured Ebooks
Welcome
March is National Women's History Month. It's time for us to celebrate and reflect on the lives of the wonderful ladies in our lives; and those who came before us. Featured this month are just a few ebooks of notable women who have left their mark on history.
For more biographies of women in history, visit the National Women's History Museum's website, which regularly updates with new stories.
Women of American History Books
Frida Kahlo
Behind Frida Kahlo's portraits, lies the story of both her life and work. It is precisely this combination that draws the reader in. Frida's work is a record of her life, and rarely can we learn so much about an artist from what she records inside the picture frame. Frida Kahlo truly is Mexico's gift to the history of art.
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun
The foremost woman artist of her age, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (17551842) exerted her considerable charm to become the friend, and then official portraitist, of Marie Antoinette. Though profitable, this role made Vigée Le Brun a public and controversial figure, and in 1789 it precipitated her exile. In a Europe torn by strife and revolution, she nevertheless managed to thrive as an independent, self-supporting artist, doggedly setting up studios in Rome, Naples, Venice, Milan, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London.
Three Artists (Three Women)
This original and sharply observant book gives new significance to three important figures in the history of twentieth-century art: Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Anne Wagner looks at their imagery and careers, relating their work to three decisive moments in the history of American modernism: the avant-garde of the 1920s, the New York School of the 1940s and 1950s, and the modernist redefinition undertaken in the 1960s.
Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong was the best known Chinese American actress during Hollywood's golden age, a free spirit and embodiment of the flapper era much like Louise Brooks. She starred in over fifty movies between 1919 and 1960, sharing the screen with such luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Marlene Dietrich. Born in Los Angeles in 1905, Wong was the second daughter of six children born to a laundryman and his wife. Obsessed with film at a young age, she managed to secure a small part in a 1919 drama about the Boxer Rebellion. Her most famous film roles were in The Thief of Baghdad, Old San Francisco, and Shanghai Express opposite Dietrich.
Audrey Hepburn : In Words and Pictures
Through discussions of her films, charity work, reminiscences from friends, and photographs of her looks over the years Audrey Hepburn reveals the woman and the icon. Nearly two decades after her final film appearance, film star, style icon, and humanitarian, Audrey Hepburn continues to captivate the world with her beauty, grace, image, and activism. One of the most successful and popular actress in the world, some of the greatest leading men in Hollywood shared the screen with Audrey.
Judy Garland on Judy Garland
“It's going to be one hell of a great—everlastingly great—book with humor, tears, fun, emotion, and love,” Judy Garland said of her plans to tell her life story. But she died at the age of forty-seven before seeing it through. Judy Garland on Judy Garland is the closest we will likely come to experiencing and exploring the legend's abandoned autobiography.
Some Kind of Mirror
Although she remains one of the all-time most recognizable Hollywood icons, Marilyn Monroe has seldom been ranked among the greatest actors of her generation. Critics have typically viewed her film roles as mere extensions of her sexpot star persona. Yet this ignores both the subtle variations between these roles and the acting skill that went into the creation of Monroe's public persona. Some Kind of Mirror offers the first extended scholarly analysis of Marilyn Monroe's film performances, examining how they united the contradictory discourses about women's roles in 1950s America.
Anne Bonny the Infamous Female Pirate
The story of the most famous female pirate in history provides a remarkable personal odyssey from a time when women were almost powerless and at the lowest level of the social order on both sides of the Atlantic. This new biographical work fills considerable gaps in Anne Bonny's life beyond her mythology to rescue an actual person for posterity. After turning her back on everything she knew growing up in South Carolina to find a sense of personal freedom, Anne Bonny sailed the Caribbean's pristine waters during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early eighteenth century.
Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham
Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham were the two most acclaimed and commercially successful African American dancers of their era and among the first black women to enjoy international screen careers. Both also produced fascinating memoirs that provided vital insights into their artistic philosophies and choices. However, difficulties in accessing and categorizing their works on the screen and on the page have obscured their contributions to film and literature. Hannah Durkin investigates Baker and Dunham's films and writings to shed new light on their legacies as transatlantic artists and civil rights figures.
Girl Groups, Girl Culture
Then He Kissed Me, He's A Rebel, Chains, Stop! In the Name of Love all these songs capture the spirit of an era and an image of'girlhood'in post-World War II America that still reverberates today. While there were over 1500 girl groups recorded in the'60s--including key hitmakers like the Ronettes, the Supremes, and the Shirelles - studies of girl-group music that address race, gender, class, and sexuality have only just begun to appear.
The Morning Breaks
On August 7, 1970, a revolt by Black prisoners in a Marin County courthouse stunned the nation. In its aftermath, Angela Davis, an African American activist-scholar who had campaigned vigorously for prisoners'rights, was placed on the FBI's'ten most wanted list.'Captured in New York City two months later, she was charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy.
Carmen Miranda
This is the first book-length study of Carmen Miranda in English. It traces her origins as a radio singer, recording artist and film star in Brazil in the 1930s, before exploring in depth her Hollywood screen roles and the construction of her long-lasting star persona in the USA.
Madam C. J. Walker's Gospel of Giving
Founder of a beauty empire, Madam C. J. Walker was celebrated as America's first self-made female millionaire in the early 1900s. Known as a leading African American entrepreneur, Walker was also devoted to an activist philanthropy aimed at empowering African Americans and challenging the injustices inflicted by Jim Crow. Tyrone McKinley Freeman's biography highlights how giving shaped Walker's life before and after she became wealthy. Poor and widowed when she arrived in St. Louis in her twenties, Walker found mentorship among black churchgoers and working black women.
Cleopatra : A Sphinx Revisited
Cleopatra—a brave, astute, and charming woman who spoke many languages, entertained lavishly, hunted, went into battle, eliminated siblings to consolidate her power, and held off the threat of Imperial Rome to protect her country as long as she could—continues to fascinate centuries after she ruled Egypt. These wide-ranging essays explore such topics as Cleopatra's controversial trip to Rome, her suicide by snake bite, and the afterlife of her love potions. They view Cleopatra from the Egyptian perspective, and examine the reception in Rome of Egyptian culture, especially of its religion and architecture.
Jane Austen : A Brief Life
Every devoted reader feels that, in some way, they know Jane Austen. But how can we make sense of her extraordinary achievements? At a time when most women received so little formal education and none could obtain a place at university, how did Austen come to write novels that have commanded the attention of some of the most brilliant minds ever since? Why were hers the books that Darwin knew by heart and Churchill read during the Blitz? In this graceful introduction to the author's life and works, Fiona Stafford offers a fresh and accessible perspective, discussing Austen's six astonishing novels in the context of their time.
Boudica : The Story of the Fearless Iceni Queen
Following the death of her husband, Boudica, queen of the Iceni tribe, is brutally attacked by the occupying Roman forces. Her home is pillaged, her daughters abused, and her land stolen from under her. Fearless, intelligent and determined, she manages to free her daughters and escape, returning with the might of an angry supporting army. With a story packed full of bloody battles, fierce fighting and brutal military tactics, Boudica is an iconic figure of war and womanhood, whose legendary life story still resonates today.
Lucy Stone : An Unapologetic Life
In the rotunda of the nation's Capital a statue pays homage to three famous nineteenth-century American women suffragists: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott.'Historically,'the inscription beneath the marble statue notes,'these three stand unique and peerless.'In fact, the statue has a glaring omission: Lucy Stone. A pivotal leader in the fight for both abolition and gender equality, her achievements marked the beginning of the women's rights movement and helped to lay the groundwork for the eventual winning of women's suffrage. Yet, today most Americans have never heard of Lucy Stone.
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antonette, Queen of France
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette is an inside look into the life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, written by her First Lady in Waiting Madame Campan. Born in 1755 and married to Louis XVI of France at the age of 14, Antoinette was renowned for her fabled excesses. She was condemned for treason in 1793 at the zenith of the French Revolution, forfeiting her life to the razor-edge of a guillotine.
Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt
Egypt's sun queen magnificently revealed in a new book by renowned Egyptologist, Aidan Dodson During the last half of the fourteenth century BC, Egypt was perhaps at the height of its prosperity. It was against this background that the “Amarna Revolution” occurred. Throughout, its instigator, King Akhenaten, had at his side his Great Wife, Nefertiti. When a painted bust of the queen found at Amarna in 1912 was first revealed to the public in the 1920s, it soon became one of the great artistic icons of the world.
America's First Woman Lawyer
During her lifetime, Myra Bradwell (1831-1894) - America's'first'woman lawyer as well as publisher and editor-in-chief of a prestigious legal newspaper - did more to establish and aid the rights of women and other legally handicapped people than any other woman of her day. Her female contemporaries - Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone - are known to all.
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls
A 2021 NATIONAL PARENTING PRODUCT AWARDS WINNER!The third installment in the New York Times bestselling Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls series, featuring 100 immigrant women who have shaped, and will continue to shape, our world.Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World is packed with 100 all-new bedtime stories about the lives of incredible female figures from the past and the present such as: Anna Wintour, Editor in Chief; Carmen Miranda, Singer and Actress; Diane von Fürstenberg, Fashion Designer; Gloria Estefan, Singer; Ilhan Omar, Politician; Josephine Baker, Entertainer and Activist; Lupita Nyong'o, Actress; Madeleine Albright, Politician; Rihanna, Entrepreneur and Singer; Samantha Power, Diplomat
Women of the Dawn
Women of the Dawn tells the stories of four remarkable Wabanaki Indian women who lived in northeast America during the four centuries that devastated their traditional world. Their courageous responses to tragedies brought on by European contact make up the heart of the book. The narrative begins with Molly Mathilde (1665-1717), a mother, a peacemaker, and the daughter of a famous chief.