“Lively and delightful…zooms in on the faces in the crowd to help us understand both the depth and the diversity of the women’s suffrage movement. Some women went to jail. Others climbed mountains. Visual artists, dancers, and journalists all played a part…Far from perfect, they used their own abilities, defects, and opportunities to build a movement that still resonates today.� —Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History “An intimate account of the unheralded activism that won women the right to vote, and an opportunity to celebrate a truly diverse cohort of first-wave feminist changemakers.� —Ms. “Demonstrates the steady advance of women’s suffrage while also complicating the standard portrait of it.� —New Yorker The story of how American women won the right to vote is usually told through the lives of a few iconic leaders. But movements for social change are rarely so tidy or top-heavy. Why They Marched profiles nineteen women—some famous, many unknown—who worked tirelessly out of the spotlight protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship. Ware shows how women who never thought they would participate in politics took actions that were risky, sometimes quirky, and often joyous to fight for a cause that mobilized three generations of activists. The dramatic experiences of these pioneering feminists—including an African American journalist, a mountain-climbing physician, a southern novelist, a polygamous Mormon wife, and two sisters on opposite sides of the suffrage divide—resonate powerfully today, as a new generation of women demands to be heard.

Looking beyond the national leadership of the suffrage movement, an acclaimed historian gives voice to the thousands of women from different backgrounds, races, and religions whose local passion and protest resounded throughout the land. 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. Ware tells her story through the lives of nineteen activists, most of whom have long been overlooked. We meet Mary Church Terrell, a multilingual African American woman; Rose Schneiderman, a labor activist building coalitions on New York's Lower East Side; Claiborne Catlin, who toured the Massachusetts countryside on horseback to drum up support for the cause; Mary Johnston, an aristocratic novelist bucking the Southern ruling elite; Emmeline W. Wells, a Mormon woman in a polygamous marriage determined to make her voice heard; and others who helped harness a groundswell of popular support. We also see the many places where the suffrage movement unfolded-in church parlors, meeting rooms, and the halls of Congress, but also on college campuses and even at the top of Mount Rainier. Few corners of the United States were untouched by suffrage activism. Ware's deeply moving stories provide a fresh account of one of the most significant moments of political mobilization in American history. The dramatic, often joyous experiences of these women resonate powerfully today, as a new generation of young women demands to be heard.

In 1607, Powhatan teenager Pocahontas first encountered English settlers when John Smith was brought to her village as a captive. In 1920, the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the constitutional right to vote. And in 2012, the U.S. Marine Corps lifted its ban on women in active combat, allowing female marines to join the sisterhood of American women who stand at the center of this country's history. Between each of these signal points runs the multi-layered experience of American women, from pre-colonization to the present.
In American Women's History: A Very Short Introduction Susan Ware emphasizes the richly diverse experiences of American women as they were shaped by factors such as race, class, religion, geographical location, age, and sexual orientation. The book begins with a comprehensive look at early America, with gender at the center, making it clear that women's experiences were not always the same as men's, and looking at the colonizers as well as the colonized, along with issues of settlement, slavery, and regional variations. She shows how women's domestic and waged labor shaped the Northern economy, and how slavery affected the lives of both free and enslaved Southern women. Ware then moves through the tumultuous decades of industrialization and urbanization, describing the 19th century movements led by women (temperance, moral reform, and abolitionism), She links women's experiences to the familiar events of the Civil War, the Progressive Era, and World War I, culminating in 20th century female activism for civil rights and successive waves of feminism.
Ware explores the major transformations in women's history, with attention to a wide range of themes from political activism to popular culture, the work force and the family. From Anne Bradstreet to Ida B. Wells to Eleanor Roosevelt, this Very Short Introduction recognizes women as a force in American history and, more importantly, tells women's history as American history. At the core of Ware's narrative is the recognition that gender - the changing historical and cultural constructions of roles assigned to the biological differences of the sexes - is central to understanding the history of American women's lives, and to the history of the United States.
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Letters From God, are the teachings Susan received by the Holy Spirit from God, to encourage people in their daily walk with Him. Susan Ware was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to E. Bradley & Mary Lois Offutt. Her brother Brad Offutt lives in Port Townsend, Washington with his wife Sandy. Their daughter Fredrica who wrote the Forward to this book & her husband Donnie also live in Port Townsend. Susan's family moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1946. Then in 1950, her Grand- father Breuer bought a farm 20 miles East, And Susan's family moved into the big two story farm house where she still lives on the soybean farm with her husband of 49 years, Conrad Ware. Susan's first job was working for the Fort Osage Newspaper in Buckner, Missouri. After attending William Jewell College in Liberty Missouri and going to Kansas City Business College she worked for Sears. Then through the years she had her own businesses and finished up with being the owner and manager of a Christian Book Store in Independence, Missouri for 18 years as well as being a Pastors wife for over thirty years.

In wanting to think through modern women's history, Susan Ware found herself drawn to seven larger-than-life women who influenced not only their professions—politics, journalism, anthropology, acting, sports, dance, and music—but also the way women saw themselves and their options in life. Ware recovers the people behind the legends of Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Mead, Katharine Hepburn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Martha Graham, and Marian Anderson in compelling life stories. She looks at how they created their persona, how they kept themselves in the public eye, and how they did so for so long. She also speaks to how these women balanced their personal lives—choosing lovers and mates and deciding whether to have children. In the choices they made and the success of those choices are lessons relevant to contemporary working women. As part of living exceptional and unconventional lives, they gave other women the ability to desire beyond the limits imposed on women and allowed them to dream and strive for lives of independence and fulfillment.

'Still Missing' is a fascinating biography of one of the most intriguing women of modern history. In it, Susan Ware recovers the parts of Earhart's life that have been obscured by the emphasis on her disappearance. Setting her in her place and times, Ware speaks of the woman who set aviation records, who endlessly promoted the ability of women to enter any and all professions, who served as a dynamic role model because of her charm and spirit. Ware's portrait of Earhart is of a woman we all need to rediscover.

A fascinating exploration of the private and public worlds of Molly Dewson, America's original female political boss. In the first biography ever written of Dewson, Susan Ware not only examines her political career as a trusted member of the Roosevelt team throughout the New Deal but also considers how Dewson's fifty-two year partnership with Polly Porter and her woman-centered existence strengthened her success as a politician. "Susan Ware's excellent biography of Molly Dewson restores one of Franklin Roosevelt's chums and an irrepressible battler for women in politics to her proper place in the history of the New Deal."-Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. "Rich, readable, and intriguing biography."-Estelle B. Freedman, Women's Review of Books "Readers should welcome Ware's spotlight on Dewson, which widens to disclose wonderfully human views of FDR and Eleanor and brings to life many virtually forgotten feminists of an era that threatens to fade into gray."-Publishers Weekly "Provides a lively and refreshingly concrete sense of everyday activities in reform and political circles. ... A wonderful account of the model of a modern political woman."-Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Times Literary Supplement Susan Ware is assistant professor of history at New York University, where she also coordinates the Women's History Program.

The New Deal administration of Franklin Roosevelt brought an unprecedented number of women to Washington to serve in positions of power and influence. "Beyond Suffrage" is a study of women who achieved positions of national leadership in the 1930s. Susan Ware discusses the network they established, their attitudes toward feminism and social reform, and the impact they had upon the New Dears social welfare policies and on Democratic party politics.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Prologue.

"Drawing on archives that include McBride's radio interviews, as well as letters from former listeners, Ware begins with a description of McBride's radio show when it was at its height."--"Booklist"

"While there have been more than a few fine radio histories written by professional and nonprofessional historians in the last forty years, the last decade must be the golden age of radio scholarship...and Susan Ware's "It's One O'Clock and Here is Mary Margaret McBride" continues this current focus in radio scholarship."
--"Journal of American History"

"Sincere and sometimes self-effacing, Mary Margaret was the Oprah of her day- her name a household word that might be forgotten if not for Susan Ware's carefully researched and charmingly likeable biography."
--"American Journalism"

"Ware has restored McBride to a rightful place in broadcasting history."--"Columbia Journalism Review"

"Tune in and treat yourself to Susan Ware's fascinating saga of the life and work of radio personality Mary Margaret McBride. Like McBride, Ware is at once probing and entertaining as she analyzes McBride's success from the 1930s through the 1950s, restoring McBride to her rightful place as the mother of talk radio and television."
--Lizabeth Cohen, author of "A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America"

"This discerning biography of radio pioneer Mary Margaret McBride illuminates an entire cultural era and offers fascinating parallels to our own time. In Susan Ware's engaging narrative, McBride emerges as an icon of twentieth century popular culture and its romance with what we now describe as 'talk radio.'McBride's story is a tale of power, freedom and connection boldly interpreted by a leading woman's historian."
--Joyce Antler, author of "The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America"

"Well written and lively, Susan Ware's biography rightly restores McBride to her proper place in broadcasting history."
--Susan Douglas, author of "Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination"

One of the most beloved radio show hosts of the 1940s and 1950s, Mary Margaret McBride (1899-1976) regularly attracted between six and eight million listeners to her daily one o'clock broadcast. During her twenty years on the air she interviewed tens of thousands of people, from President Harry Truman and Frank Lloyd Wright to Rachel Carson and Zora Neale Hurston. This is her story.

Five decades after their broadcast, her shows remain remarkably fresh and interesting. And yet McBride--the Oprah Winfrey of her day--has been practically forgotten, both in radio history and in the history of twentieth-century popular culture, primarily because she was a woman and because she was on daytime radio.

Susan Ware explains how Mary Margaret McBride was one of the first to exploit the cultural and political importance of talk radio, pioneering the magazine-style format that many talk shows still use. This radio biography recreates the world of daytime radio from the 1930s through the 1950s, confirming the enormous significance of radio to everyday life, especially for women.

In the first in-depth treatment of McBride, Ware starts with a description of how widely McBride was revered in the mid-1940s--the fifteenth anniversary party for her show in 1949 filled Yankee Stadium. Once the readers havegotten to know Mary Margaret (as everyone called her), Ware backtracks to tell the story of McBride's upbringing, her early career, and how she got her start in radio. The latter part of the book picks up McBride's story after World War II and through her death in 1976. An epilogue discusses the contemporary talk show phenomenon with a look back to Mary Margaret McBride's early influence on the format.

When Billie Jean King trounced Bobby Riggs in tennis's ""Battle of the Sexes"" in 1973, she placed sports squarely at the center of a national debate about gender equity. In this winning combination of biography and history, Susan Ware argues that King's challenge to sexism, the supportive climate of second-wave feminism, and the legislative clout of Title IX sparked a women's sports revolution in the 1970s that fundamentally reshaped American society. While King did not single-handedly cause the revolution in women's sports, she quickly became one of its most enduring symbols, as did Title IX, a federal law that was initially passed in 1972 to attack sex discrimination in educational institutions but had its greatest impact by opening opportunities for women in sports. King's place in tennis history is secure, and now, with Game, Set, Match, she can take her rightful place as a key player in the history of feminism as well. By linking the stories of King and Title IX, Ware explains why women's sports took off in the 1970s and demonstrates how giving women a sporting chance has permanently changed American life on and off the playing field.

In the tradition of Composing a Life and Writing a Woman's Life, a look at the intimate and public lives of seven strong and vibrant women who had a lasting impact on American popular culture and on women's lives.

In wanting to think through modern women's history, Susan Ware found herself drawn to seven larger-than-life women who influenced not only their professions—politics, journalism, anthropology, acting, sports, dance, and music—but also the way women saw themselves and their options in life. Ware recovers the people behind the legends of Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Mead, Katharine Hepburn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Martha Graham, and Marian Anderson in compelling life stories. She looks at how they created their persona, how they kept themselves in the public eye, and how they did so for so long. She also speaks to how these women balanced their personal lives—choosing lovers and mates and deciding whether to have children. In the choices they made and the success of those choices are lessons relevant to contemporary working women. As part of living exceptional and unconventional lives, they gave other women the ability to desire beyond the limits imposed on women and allowed them to dream and strive for lives of independence and fulfillment.

"A wonderful evocation of a period in which, for one brief moment, the sky was the limit for female achievement."—Molly Haskell, New York Times Book Review

"A thoughtful, provocative, manifold read."—Blanche Wiesen Cook

"Fresh and original."—Houston Post