Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Women

The 1930s was a magical age in Hollywood, with Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney, Bette Davis, and Clark Gable lighting up the silver screen. But Deanna Durbin’s fame surpassed them all. Born in Canada, Deanna was “discovered” by star-maker Eddie Cantor, producer Joe Pasternak, and director Henry Koster, and she quickly became the world’s most celebrated star. She saved Universal Studios from ruin, she was a favorite of Winston Churchill and Anne Frank, and she became the highest-paid woman in America.

From the women who pounded the pavement selling their songs in Tin Pan Alley at the turn of the twentieth century; to the women who broke new ground writing shows during the Great Depression; to the women who penned protest musicals fighting for social justice during the 1970s; to those who are revitalizing the landscape of American musicals today, Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy That the History Books Left Out is the first-ever book to tell the story of the over three hundred inspiring women who wrote Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals.

Recruited to the Secret Service as one of its first five female agents, Kathryn Clark Childers would surprise many people, including herself. Her duties included undercover work, protective details for Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, and attending state dinners where she met world leaders, including Prince Juan Carlos of Spain. In addition, she had to figure out how to disguise the .357 Magnum revolver that she carried at all times, whether wearing jogging clothes, a business suit, or an evening gown.

Excellent biographies have been written about Clara Barton, Sarah Josepha Hale, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Tubman, but their lives have never been looked at together as they intertwined with the Civil War narrative. Plumb compares and contrasts the qualities of the women to discover their common attributes for success and what was unique to each woman. Without leading troops in battle or wielding political power, these five women profoundly influenced the start of the war and its conduct throughout as North and South clashed.

Brooke Berman moved to New York as a wide-eyed 18-year-old, eager to call the big city home. Candid, funny, and thoughtful, in No Place Like Home, we follow Brooke’s adventures as she crisscrosses town trying to make ends meet and make her dreams of a life in the theater come true. With each apartment, from the heavenly to the horrible, she learns more about how to heal the past, let go of excess, and keep a sense of humor while trying to stay flexible in the search for stability.

In her touching memoir The Glory Road, Anita Faye Garner recreates her remarkable upbringing. The story begins with Ray’s attempts to settle down and the family’s inevitable return to the gospel circuit and concludes with Sister Fern’s brushes with stardom and the family’s journey west to California where they finally landed - with some unexpected detours along the way. The Glory Road carries listeners back to the 1950s South and the intersections of faith and family at the very roots of American popular music.

In Hadassah, Lieberman pens the compelling story of her extraordinary life: from her family’s experience in Eastern Europe to their move to Gardner, Massachusetts; forging her career; experiencing divorce; and, following her remarriage, her life on the national political stage. By offering insight into her identity as an immigrant, an American Jew, a working woman, and a wife, mother, and grandmother, Lieberman’s moving memoir speaks to many of the major issues of our time, from immigration to gender politics.  

Award-winning journalist and host of Black Enterprise Business Report Caroline Clarke’s moving memoir of her surprise discovery of her birth mother - Cookie Cole, the daughter of Nat King Cole - and the relationship that blossomed between them through the heartfelt messages they exchanged on hundreds of postcards. A heartfelt, inspiring tribute to both Caroline’s adoptive parents and her biological mother, Postcards from Cookie illuminates the enduring power of love to shape and guide our lives.

Chris Dubbs tells the fascinating stories of Edith Wharton, Nellie Bly, and more than 30 other American women who worked as war reporters. As Dubbs shows, stories by these journalists brought in women from the periphery of war and made them active participants - fully engaged and equally heroic, if bearing different burdens and making different sacrifices. Women journalists traveled from belligerent capitals to the front lines to report on the conflict. But their experiences also brought them into contact with social transformations, political unrest, labor conditions, and more.

July 18, 1969: A car driven by Senator Edward M. Kennedy plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Cape Cod. Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old former staffer for Kennedy’s brother Robert, died in the crash. The scandal that followed demeaned Kopechne’s reputation and scapegoated her for Ted Kennedy’s inability to run for the presidency instead of acknowledging her as an innocent victim in a tragedy that took her life. Kashatus’s biography of Mary Jo Kopechne illuminates the life of a politically committed young woman who embodied the best ideals of the 60s.

Sally Ride, the first American woman to go to space, once said that she didn’t set out to be a role model, but after her first flight, she realized that she was one. Like her, the 12 women scientists in this collection became unintentional heroes through perseverance and hard work, making great discoveries in all areas of science. From Vera Rubin’s examination of the internal dynamics of galaxies to Nobel Prize winner May-Britt Moser’s study of the brain’s GPS-like navigation system, Trailblazers highlights the achievements of women who became role models for us all.

Celebrate the impact women have made in our culture: This feminist book is a beacon of brilliance. It is the perfect gift for artists, intellectuals, and anyone who seeks to be inspired by words and profound lives. Most of all, it is a celebration of the journeys and accomplishments of women who have worked to have their voices heard in black and white letters across the world.

Dorothy Parker observed, "It's a man's world". The lady entrepreneurs and game-changers profiled in Women Who Launch would beg to differ. Unlike the matrons of the 1950s - "the women who lunched” - these kick-ass females left their DNA in the annals of time.

For far too long, the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born. But Susan Ware uncovered a much broader and more diverse story waiting to be told. Why They Marched is a tribute to the many women who worked tirelessly in communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship.

When Lou Henry married Herbert Hoover in February 1899, she looked forward to a partnership of equality and a life of adventure. She could fire a rifle and sit a horse as well as any man. The Quaker community of Whittier, California, where she lived as a teen, reinforced the egalitarian spirit of her upbringing. But history had other ideas for Lou Henry Hoover. Conveying Lou’s humor, personality, and intelligence, A Woman of Adventure takes a fresh look at the first lady who preceded Eleanor Roosevelt and her also-extraordinary accomplishments.

A powerful meditation on identity and belonging, Sejal Shah explores the tension of being both invisible and hyper-visible in a country that struggles with race. The daughter of immigrants from India and Kenya, Shah wrestles with her experiences growing up in—and returning to—western New York, an area of stark racial and socioeconomic segregation. Her work illuminates how we are all marked by family and place; by the limits of our bodies; by our losses and regrets; by who and what we love; by our ambivalences and our silences.

In the middle of the Great Depression, Montana native Julia Bennett arrived in New York City with no money and an audacious business plan: to identify and visit easterners who could afford to spend their summers at her brand new dude ranch near Ennis, Montana. Julia, a big-game hunter whom friends described as “a clever shot with both rifle and shotgun,” flouted gender conventions to build guest ranches in Montana and Arizona that attracted world-renowned entertainers and artists.

Anna May Wong remains one of Hollywood’s best-known Chinese American actors. Between 1919 and 1960, Anna May Wong starred in over fifty movies, sharing billing with stars such as Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Ramon Novarro, and Warner Oland. Her life, though, is the prototypical story of an immigrant’s difficult path through the prejudices of American culture. In a narrative that recalls the pathos of life in LA's Chinese neighborhoods and the glamour of Hollywood’s pleasure palaces, Graham Russell Gao Hodges recovers the life of a Hollywood legend.

After author Jess Keefe ended things with her long-term boyfriend, she moved in with her brother in hopes that family could help her not only heal from the break-up but also evolve into a healthy adult. But that fantasy ended when Matt’s heroin addiction came roaring back after lying dormant for years, leading to a fatal overdose one October night. Thirty-Thousand Steps is a powerful and transformative memoir that interweaves the author’s obsessive training to becoming a distance runner, along with her focused research into the science of addiction in the shadow of grief.

As manic teens in the ’90s punk scene, Gogo Germaine and her girl gang of delinquents engage in a vivid spectrum of misbehavior—from truancy to tattoos to trespassing. Here, in the underbelly of adolescence, music is God and the rest is a rush of nihilism. Gogo and her friends stumble through sound and fury into questionable firsts at varying degrees of sobriety. Many of us blunder through that black hole. It is a point of universal convergence, manifested by divergent experiences. Gogo’s rebellion may look different from yours, but the visceral highs and lows will be familiar.