This collection of speeches by Amelia Jenks Bloomer, a 19th-century feminist reformer, explores women's issues and lives during the period from 1850 to 1880. Bloomer lived in Seneca Falls, New York, and was the founder of a woman's newspaper, the Lily. She supported dress reform and was internationally famous for her introduction of bloomers. She was a staunch supporter of women's rights and worked closely with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom she introduced to one another. Bloomer was an extremely popular public speaker who traveled throughout New York State and the mid-West lecturing on temperance and greater opportunities for women in employment and education. This volume is the only collection of her speeches, and Coon's introduction creates a narrative of Bloomer's life as the story of a shy, modest woman whose commitment to reform and the endorsement of a new style of women's dress catapulted her into public life.

This important book shares insights derived from surveys, interviews, and focus groups conducted with a diverse group of first-wave Baby Boomer female professionals (born 1946-1956). These individuals changed the workplace in the 1970s and are now changing views of retirement. In Thriving in Retirement: Lessons from Baby Boomer Women, profiles of highly diverse professional women are interwoven with information gleaned from surveys, interviews, and focus groups, thereby allowing readers to identify with individuals similar to themselves, whether through profession, education, personal concerns, or demographics. In spite of dissimilarities in backgrounds, career paths, and personal experiences, these women have much in common. As they leave their full-time careers, they are committed to exploring new post-career identities while finding ways to stay engaged, share their professional expertise, and develop deeply held personal interests and passions they may have set aside in the past. The Baby Boomer women profiled here reveal details such as the early influences on their education and career choices, the aspects of their careers they enjoyed the most, the opportunities and roadblocks they encountered, as well as how they balanced marriage and family responsibilities with their careers. Readers will benefit from the examples set by these women, whose diversity and varying experiences provide inspiration for nearly anyone of retirement age who finds herself wondering "What's next?" Provides a model for reflection to help Baby Boomer professional women understand who they are, their strengths and interests, and what they want to do as next steps when they leave their full-time careers Offers compelling stories from women of a range of ethnic and geographic backgrounds, professions, and employment statuses as well as races, sexual orientations, and marital statuses to represent a bright, engaged cohort of women to whom readers can relate as colleagues Asserts a new, future-oriented concept of retirement, where individuals draw on the strengths and expertise of their careers while actively engaging with others and exploring interests and passions they may have set aside in the past