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Readers of Cheaper by the Dozen remember Lillian Moller Gilbreth
(1878-1972) as the working mom who endures the antics of not only
twelve children but also an engineer husband eager to experiment
with the principles of efficiency -- especially on his own
household.
What readers today might not know is that Lillian Gilbreth was
herself a high-profile engineer, and the only woman to win the
coveted Hoover Medal for engineers. She traveled the world, served
as an advisor on women's issues to five U.S. presidents, and
mingled with the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. Her
husband, Frank Gilbreth, died after twenty years of marriage,
leaving her to raise their eleven surviving children, all under the
age of nineteen. She continued her career and put each child
through college. Retiring at the age of ninety, Lillian Gilbreth
was the working mother who "did it all."
Jane Lancaster's spirited and richly detailed biography tells
Lillian Gilbreth's life story-one that resonates with issues faced
today by many working women. Lancaster confronts the complexities
of how one of the twentieth century's foremost career women could
be pregnant, nursing, or caring for children for more than three
decades.
Yet we see how Gilbreth's engineering work dovetailed with her
family life in the professional and domestic partnership that she
forged with her husband and in her long solo career. The innovators
behind many labor-saving devices and procedures used in factories,
offices, and kitchens, the Gilbreths tackled the problem of
efficiency through motion study. To this Lillian added a
psychological dimension, with empathy toward the worker. The
couple's expertise also yielded the "Gilbreth family system," a
model that allowed the mother to be professionally active if she
chose, while the parents worked together to raise responsible
citizens.
Lancaster has woven into her narrative many insights gleaned from
interviews with the surviving Gilbreth children and from historical
research into such topics as technology, family, work, and
feminism. Filled with anecdotes, this definitive biography of
Lillian Gilbreth will engage readers intrigued by one of America's
most famous families and by one of the nation's most successful
women.
Formed in 1801 to protect sea captains against attack from the
British navy and Barbary Pirates, the Providence Marine Corps of
Artillery remains one of the most famed regiments in the U.S. army.
It distinguished itself during the War of 1812, the Dorr Rebellion,
and in nearly every major engagement of the Civil War. After
assuming the identity of the 103rd Field Artillery Regiment of the
Rhode Island National Guard, the unit battled amid the carnage of
the Western Front in World War I, fought the enemy in the
mosquito-infested South Pacific islands during World War II, and
weathered the scorching Iraq deserts in the twenty-first century.
Based on extensive primary research and interviews with veterans of
the corps, this engaging narrative offers an insider's look at the
illustrious regiment in its first full history.
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