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Book Buzz: Women’s History Month
By Carolyn Larson – Special to The Garden Island
In celebration of Women’s History Month, the Friends of Lihu‘e Public Library, in collaboration with the League of Women Voters and the Kaua‘i Committee on the Status of Women, is sponsoring a free public screening of Kaiulani Lee’s film “A Sense of Wonder: An Evening with Rachel Carson” at 7 p.m., March 25, at the Lihu‘e Library Conference Room.
The public celebration of women’s history in this country began in 1978 as Women’s History Week in Sonoma County, Calif. The week including March 8, International Women’s Day, was selected. The idea caught on in other areas of the country; an in 1981 a joint congressional resolution proclaiming a National Women’s History Week was passed.
In 1987, Congress expanded the celebration to a month, and March was declared National Women’s History Month. This year’s theme is “Women taking the lead to save our planet.” One way to celebrate is to learn more about women who’ve changed our world. Try Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall or Alice Waters.
This week’s book list reflects the rich variety of women’s history titles available at your local library. Also, check out the fine CyberExhibits at the National Women’s History Museum at www.nwhm.org/exhibits/index.html.
Happy reading.
American Priestess:
The Extraordinary Story
of Anna Spafford and the
American Colony in Jerusalem
By Jane Fletcher Geniesse
266.0092 Spafford Ge
The intriguing, improbable and historically rich tale of Anna Spafford’s multi-layered journey from Chicago to Jerusalem. This book chronicles a dedicated cult’s search for answers in the Holy Land and of the tense relationships between religious groups in Jerusalem. It reveals the shocking past of the most famous American family in Jerusalem, owners of the American Colony Hotel, a fabled mansion that has been the retreat for foreign correspondents, diplomats, pilgrims, and spies. With its history of tragedy, religious extremism, emotional blackmail, and peculiar sexual practices American Priestess provides a fascinating exploration of the seductive power of evangelicalism and raises questions about the manipulation of religion to serve personal goals.
Animal Vegetable Miracle:
A Year of Food
By Barbara Kingsolver
5932.021 Cleopatra Ty
Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, what they don’t raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Her tale is both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny. Kingsolver is not the first to note our national “eating disorder” and the injuries industrial agriculture wreaks, yet this practical vision of how we might eat instead is as fresh as just-picked sweet corn.
From Eve to Dawn:
The History of Women
in the World
By Marilyn French
305.4209 Fr
This is a four-volume set — Vol I: Origins, from Prehistory to the First Millenium; Vol II: The Masculine Mystique, from Feudalism to the French Revolution; Vol III: Infernos and Paradises, The Triumph of Capitalism in the 19th Century; and Vol IV: Revolutions and Struggles for Justice in the 20th Century. One day, no history will be written without the female half of the world. Until then, we have the scholarship of Marilyn French. She wades through copious amounts of scholarly data on the history of civilizations and offers up, in readable prose, an important synthesis of ‘herstory.’
Galileo’s Daughter:
A Historical Memoir of
Science, Faith, and Love
By Dava Sobel
520.92 Galilei So
Inspired by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo’s daughter, a cloistered nun, Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called “the father of modern physics — indeed of modern science altogether.” The book also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as “a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me.” The oldest of Galileo’s three illegitimate children, she was born Virginia in 1600. At thirteen, her father placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the appropriate name of Suor Maria Celest. Her loving support proved to be her father’s greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years.
Heart in the Wild:
A Journey of Self-Discovery with Animals of the
Wilderness
By Susan Chernak McElroy
508 Mc
Writing with a passionate love and respect for the natural world, McElroy’s true stories speak to the necessity for ritual, the value of generosity and how to deal with essential life changes by reconnecting to the earth and its rhythms.
Miss Leavitt’s Stars:
The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe
By George Johnson
522.09 Jo
An elegant and absorbing account of a signal event in humanity’s discovery of the deeper cosmos. Johnson shines a clear light on the crucial role Henrietta Leavitt played in sizing up our universe. Because of Leavitt’s discovery, astronomers could use a kind of star known as a “variable”–one whose brightness waxes and wanes in a regular cycle—as a cosmic yardstick. Her obscured brilliance is emblematic of the twentieth-century struggle by talented women to be admitted into an astronomical firmament populated by bright male egos.
The Muse of
the Revolution:
The Secret Pen of Mercy
Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation
By Nancy Rubin Stuart
973.3092 Warren Ru
This is a portrait of Founding Mother, Mercy Otis Warren, who chronicled the Revolution, improved the Constitution, campaigned for the Bill of Rights and confronted her competitive, even malicious, male-controlled world with frequent success. It is a wonderful historical corrective about Mrs. Warren, the patriotic poet, playwright, pamphleteer, scholar, and agitator for liberty.
Reason for Hope:
A Spiritual Journey
By Jane Goodall
590.92 Goodall Go
Encyclopedia Britannica says behavioral scientist Goodall is, “without question one of the most significant contributors to our knowledge of the world around us.” Her revolutionary study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe preserve forever altered the very definition of humanity. Now, in a poignant and insightful memoir, Jane Goodall explores her extraordinary life and personal spiritual odyssey with observation as profound as the knowledge she has brought back from the forest.
Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated:
Why Women’s Lives Aren’t Getting Any Easier, and How We Can Make Real Progress for Ourselves and Our Daughters
By Congresswoman
Carolyn B. Maloney
305.42097 Ma
From a woman whose grandmother’s career advice was, “Get married,” comes a reminder of how far we still have to go to end gender inequities and improve women’s lives. Her guide to how women and like-minded men can make that journey is both practical and inspiring. A re-energizer handbook. She’s Maloney, hear her roar.
Silent Spring
By Rachel Carson
363.7384 Ca
Released in 1962, Silent Spring offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still exists. Rachel Carson’s book focuses on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers, and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice that leads to dangerous chemicals in the food source. Carson argues that those chemicals are more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans are exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death. Presented with thorough documentation, the book has opened more than a few eyes about the dangers of the modern world and stands today as a landmark work.
•Carolyn Larson is head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library. Her weekly Wednesday column brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library.
The public celebration of women’s history in this country began in 1978 as Women’s History Week in Sonoma County, Calif. The week including March 8, International Women’s Day, was selected. The idea caught on in other areas of the country; an in 1981 a joint congressional resolution proclaiming a National Women’s History Week was passed.
In 1987, Congress expanded the celebration to a month, and March was declared National Women’s History Month. This year’s theme is “Women taking the lead to save our planet.” One way to celebrate is to learn more about women who’ve changed our world. Try Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall or Alice Waters.
This week’s book list reflects the rich variety of women’s history titles available at your local library. Also, check out the fine CyberExhibits at the National Women’s History Museum at www.nwhm.org/exhibits/index.html.
Happy reading.
American Priestess:
The Extraordinary Story
of Anna Spafford and the
American Colony in Jerusalem
By Jane Fletcher Geniesse
266.0092 Spafford Ge
The intriguing, improbable and historically rich tale of Anna Spafford’s multi-layered journey from Chicago to Jerusalem. This book chronicles a dedicated cult’s search for answers in the Holy Land and of the tense relationships between religious groups in Jerusalem. It reveals the shocking past of the most famous American family in Jerusalem, owners of the American Colony Hotel, a fabled mansion that has been the retreat for foreign correspondents, diplomats, pilgrims, and spies. With its history of tragedy, religious extremism, emotional blackmail, and peculiar sexual practices American Priestess provides a fascinating exploration of the seductive power of evangelicalism and raises questions about the manipulation of religion to serve personal goals.
Animal Vegetable Miracle:
A Year of Food
By Barbara Kingsolver
5932.021 Cleopatra Ty
Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, what they don’t raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Her tale is both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny. Kingsolver is not the first to note our national “eating disorder” and the injuries industrial agriculture wreaks, yet this practical vision of how we might eat instead is as fresh as just-picked sweet corn.
From Eve to Dawn:
The History of Women
in the World
By Marilyn French
305.4209 Fr
This is a four-volume set — Vol I: Origins, from Prehistory to the First Millenium; Vol II: The Masculine Mystique, from Feudalism to the French Revolution; Vol III: Infernos and Paradises, The Triumph of Capitalism in the 19th Century; and Vol IV: Revolutions and Struggles for Justice in the 20th Century. One day, no history will be written without the female half of the world. Until then, we have the scholarship of Marilyn French. She wades through copious amounts of scholarly data on the history of civilizations and offers up, in readable prose, an important synthesis of ‘herstory.’
Galileo’s Daughter:
A Historical Memoir of
Science, Faith, and Love
By Dava Sobel
520.92 Galilei So
Inspired by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo’s daughter, a cloistered nun, Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called “the father of modern physics — indeed of modern science altogether.” The book also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as “a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me.” The oldest of Galileo’s three illegitimate children, she was born Virginia in 1600. At thirteen, her father placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the appropriate name of Suor Maria Celest. Her loving support proved to be her father’s greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years.
Heart in the Wild:
A Journey of Self-Discovery with Animals of the
Wilderness
By Susan Chernak McElroy
508 Mc
Writing with a passionate love and respect for the natural world, McElroy’s true stories speak to the necessity for ritual, the value of generosity and how to deal with essential life changes by reconnecting to the earth and its rhythms.
Miss Leavitt’s Stars:
The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe
By George Johnson
522.09 Jo
An elegant and absorbing account of a signal event in humanity’s discovery of the deeper cosmos. Johnson shines a clear light on the crucial role Henrietta Leavitt played in sizing up our universe. Because of Leavitt’s discovery, astronomers could use a kind of star known as a “variable”–one whose brightness waxes and wanes in a regular cycle—as a cosmic yardstick. Her obscured brilliance is emblematic of the twentieth-century struggle by talented women to be admitted into an astronomical firmament populated by bright male egos.
The Muse of
the Revolution:
The Secret Pen of Mercy
Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation
By Nancy Rubin Stuart
973.3092 Warren Ru
This is a portrait of Founding Mother, Mercy Otis Warren, who chronicled the Revolution, improved the Constitution, campaigned for the Bill of Rights and confronted her competitive, even malicious, male-controlled world with frequent success. It is a wonderful historical corrective about Mrs. Warren, the patriotic poet, playwright, pamphleteer, scholar, and agitator for liberty.
Reason for Hope:
A Spiritual Journey
By Jane Goodall
590.92 Goodall Go
Encyclopedia Britannica says behavioral scientist Goodall is, “without question one of the most significant contributors to our knowledge of the world around us.” Her revolutionary study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe preserve forever altered the very definition of humanity. Now, in a poignant and insightful memoir, Jane Goodall explores her extraordinary life and personal spiritual odyssey with observation as profound as the knowledge she has brought back from the forest.
Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated:
Why Women’s Lives Aren’t Getting Any Easier, and How We Can Make Real Progress for Ourselves and Our Daughters
By Congresswoman
Carolyn B. Maloney
305.42097 Ma
From a woman whose grandmother’s career advice was, “Get married,” comes a reminder of how far we still have to go to end gender inequities and improve women’s lives. Her guide to how women and like-minded men can make that journey is both practical and inspiring. A re-energizer handbook. She’s Maloney, hear her roar.
Silent Spring
By Rachel Carson
363.7384 Ca
Released in 1962, Silent Spring offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still exists. Rachel Carson’s book focuses on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers, and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice that leads to dangerous chemicals in the food source. Carson argues that those chemicals are more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans are exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death. Presented with thorough documentation, the book has opened more than a few eyes about the dangers of the modern world and stands today as a landmark work.
•Carolyn Larson is head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library. Her weekly Wednesday column brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library.
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