Showing titles in Women

Across the world, women are still denied opportunities and rights. Maya Oppenheim supplies you with the unforgettable realities, real-world anecdotes and tales of resistance to help you combat denial and continued injustice as the far-right grows and women's rights come under attack.

Women in the War beautifully weaves together the oral histories of 10 remarkable women who dedicated their young adulthood to the war effort. From aiding codebreaking at Bletchley Park to plotting the Battle of the Atlantic and working alongside Churchill in the War Rooms below Whitehall, these are the women who helped to defend the Home Front and kept Britain going. Now with the wisdom of age, they look back at how they coped with danger, trauma and stress, and tell how their spirits were fortified by friendship, fellowship and romance.

In the 10 lessons of America’s Founding Women, you will uncover the very real stories of the women who helped shape the United States as it underwent its transformation from a British colony to a fledgling nation. Professor Cassandra Good will help you understand what life was like for women during the American Revolution, and beyond, and how these women balanced the rigid social expectations of the late 18th and early 19th centuries with their own talents and desires.

Beauty, make-up, art, power: How to Be a Renaissance Woman presents an alternative history of this period as told by the women behind the paintings, providing a window into their often overlooked or silenced lives. Can the pressures women feel to look good be traced back to the sixteenth century?

Humanity's journey from poverty to prosperity is filled with men who have become household names, but how many female entrepreneurs, merchants and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very recently, there were none. But what about Phryne, the richest woman in Ancient Athens, who offered to pay to rebuild the walls of Thebes after the city was razed to the ground by Alexander the Great? Or the canny businesswoman Khadijah, better known as the first wife of Muhammad, who employed him to look after her troop of trading caravans?

Take a tour of the past and uncover stories of the women whose lives and achievements have shaped our modern world. In Life Lessons from Historical Women, Eleanor Morton celebrates the ordinary women whose decisions and accomplishments in their everyday lives resonate with us today. Whether it's what we can learn from the first woman to summit Everest or the trailblazing ladies who confirm that pockets have always been must-have in women's clothing, Eleanor writes with humour and a sincere respect for our history, and imparts valuable lessons for the modern female.

In this vivid and essential work of historical non-fiction, Kate Morgan explores the legal campaigns, test cases and individual injustices of the Victorian and Edwardian eras which fundamentally re-shaped the status of women under British law. These are seen through the untold stories of women whose cases became cornerstones of our modern legal system and shine a light on the historical inequalities of the law.

In 1943, Kathleen, then thirty, was a nurse-in-training at the Blackburn Royal Infirmary. For the next three years, she kept a meticulous diary of her day-to-day existence, leaving behind a vivid record of the real-time concerns of a busy, thoughtful woman on the frontline of the war at home. Kathleen’s days were never the same. She writes in clear and lively prose about life in the hospital: of her fellow nurses, her patients, about death and dying, and the progress of the war as wounded soldiers returned from Normandy in the summer of 1944.

Number 4 Euston Square was a respectable boardinghouse, like many others in Victorian London. But beneath this ordinary veneer lurked a murderous darkness. On 8th May 1879, the corpse of former resident Matilda Hacker was uncovered in the coal cellar. The investigation that followed stripped bare the shadow-side of Victorian domesticity, throwing the lives of everyone within into an extraordinary maelstrom.

Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little-known aspects of the Civil War: The stories of four courageous women - a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow - who were spies. After shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

On Sarah A. Chrisman's 29th birthday, her husband, Gabriel, presented her with a corset. The material and the design were breathtakingly beautiful, but her mind immediately filled with unwelcome views. Although she had been in love with the Victorian era all her life, she had specifically asked her husband not to buy her a corset - ever. She'd heard how corsets affected the female body and what they represented, and she wanted none of it.

Who says women don’t go to war? From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, these are the stories of women for whom battle was not a metaphor.

One name links Betrand Russell and Axel Munthe, Augustus John and Henry Lamb, H.H. Asquith and Duncan Grant, Aldous Huxley and Lytton Strachey. To some she was a lover, to others a confidant and adviser. To many she was a mother substitute. But wherever the phrase ‘Bloomsbury group’ is spoken, Lady Ottoline Morrell’s name is not far behind.

Deeply researched and rich with detail, Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster is a remarkable true story of courage, ingenuity, and resistance. Gerri Willis pulls back the curtain on one of the most fearless heroes of the Civil War, restoring her to her rightful place as an American icon.

Since the inception of the Secret Service Bureau back in 1909, women have worked at the very heart of British secret intelligence - yet their contributions have been all but written out of history. Now, drawing on private and previously-classified documents, leading historian Claire Hubbard-Hall brings their gripping true stories to life.

Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867–1934) was the first woman scientist to win worldwide acclaim and was, indeed, one of the great scientists of the twentieth century. Written by Curie’s daughter, the renowned international activist Eve Curie, this biography chronicles Curie’s legendary achievements in science, including her pioneering efforts in the study of radioactivity and her two Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry.

This book is the product of The Earhart Project, a thirty-four-year investigation of the Earhart tragedy by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. TIGHAR investigators had no agenda. They were not out to advocate, excuse, honor, or impugn. They saw the Earhart disappearance as an aviation accident and reasoned the answer to its cause and outcome should be discoverable if they could find, assemble, and analyze the relevant data.

Embark on a journey through time, and connect with the spirit of the divine feminine within the ancient British Isles. Look around you. The major religions that grip the world, even in modern times, have one theme in common: it’s the man that rules, the man that leads, and the man that you have to follow. And the society, built around these tenets, expects you to act a certain way…behave a certain way…and, sometimes, even live a certain way - especially when you are a woman.

Mary Welsh, a celebrated wartime journalist during the London Blitz and the liberation of Paris, meets Ernest Hemingway in May 1944. He becomes so infatuated with Mary that he asks her to marry him the third time they meet—although they are married to other people. Eventually, she succumbs to Ernest's campaign, and in the last days of the war joined him at his estate in Cuba. Through Mary's eyes, we see Ernest Hemingway in a fresh light. Their turbulent marriage survives his cruelty and abuse, perhaps because of their sexual compatibility and her essential contribution to his writing.

The story of extraordinary women who lost their way - their sense of self, their identity, their freedom - and found it again through walking in the wild. A feminist exploration of the power of walking in nature, following in the footsteps of Gwen John, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frieda Lawrence, Clara Vyvyan, Simone de Beauvoir, Daphne Du Maurier and Nan Shepherd.