Arcadia Public Library

"From America's favorite government teacher, a heartfelt, inspiring portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country. In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn't make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history's...

"A memoir by the celebrated singer-songwriter and social activist Ani DiFranco In her new memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani DiFranco recounts her early life from a place of hard-won wisdom, combining personal expression, the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more into an inspiring whole. In these frank, honest, passionate, and often funny pages is the tale of one woman's...

The definitive biography of Sylvia Pankhurst, a woman ahead of her times - political rebel, human rights champion and radical feminist. Born into one Britain's most famous activist families, Sylvia Pankhurst was a natural rebel; a talented artist, prolific writer and newspaper editor. A free spirit and radical visionary, history placed her in the shadow of her famous mother, Emmeline, and elder sister, Christabel. Yet Sylvia Pankhurst was the most...

"For the first time, the edited journals of Alice Walker are gathered together to reflect the complex, passionate, talented, and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner of The Color Purple. She intimately explores her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African-American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world. In an unvarnished and singular voice, she explores an astonishing array of events: marching in...

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was one of the leading figures of the Progressive era. This "pragmatic visionary," as Knight calls her, is best known as the creator of Hull House, a model settlement house offering training, shelter, and culture for Chicago's poor. Addams also involved herself in a long list of Progressive campaigns. Her rhetorical skills as both speaker and writer made her internationally recognized as a supporter of civil rights, woman suffrage,...

A new portrait of Betty Friedan, the author and activist acclaimed as the mother of second-wave feminism. The feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan (1921-2006), pathbreaking author of The Feminine Mystique, was powerful and polarizing. In this biography, the first in more than twenty years, Rachel Shteir draws on Friedan's papers and on interviews with family, colleagues, and friends to create a nuanced portrait.

"A picture book biography about First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's early years and how the challenges she faced early in life helped her become a compassionate public servant and champion of human rights"-- Provided by publisher.

A fictional portrait that follows the life of the founder of Planned Parenthood. The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she eventually channeled her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception

Presents twenty women in America's history who fought for men's and women's rights, including Ann Lee, Jane Adams, Alice Paul, Dolores Huerta, and Sojourner Truth.