The twentieth century rise of the automobile collided head on with Victorian prescriptions for the proper role and place of women in society. Gender conventions cast women as too weak, dependent and flighty to manage the fiery motorised beast. Overcoming the stereotypes was as difficult for women as gaining access to the vote, the professions, and education, yet their personal feats of driving in both war and peace demolished the gender barriers against their taking to the road. After women proved once and for all they could drive under the worst conditions in World War I, they adapted the automobile to their domestic roles in urban society during the 1920s. Written with flair and verve, this volume displays Scharff's erudition in social, cultural, gender, and technological history.

Dorothy Johnson, author of "The Hanging Tree" and "Indian Country," describes the great western experience of a number of nineteenth-century women of widely different situations and fates. Some were captured by Indians. Cynthia Ann Parker, assimilated to the Comanche tribe after being captured as a child, was later recaptured by U.S. soldiers who killed her Comanche husband and separated her forever from her sons. Pioneer Fanny Kelly spent five months as a captive of the Sioux; she went on to write a clearheaded book about her experiences. Some, like missionary Mary Richardson Walker and the independent Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair, showed great dedication to their work. Some were adventurous. Molly Slade, fiercely loyal to her ruthless husband, once helped him escape a band of outlaws intent on killing him. The intrepid Isabella Bird reported on her solitary travels in the Wild West, while Army wife Elizabeth Custer rode out with her husband's cavalry one spring. Others proved their grit as homesteaders. All these women, and more, figure unforgettably in Some "Went West,"

The Civil War turned the genteel world of Virginia society upside-down for Sallie Brock Putnam. She lived in the Confederate capital of Richmond throughout the war and saw it transformed from a quiet town of culture to a swollen refugee camp, black-market center, prison venue, and hospital complex. As the smoke from nearby battlefields drifted into town, swaggering young soldiers and ambulance trains filled the streets.

Putnam describes the excitement of secession giving way to sacrifice and grim determination, the women of Richmond aiding the war effort, the funerals and hasty weddings, the reduced circumstances of even the "best" families, and the despicable profiteering. Asserting that "every woman was to some extent a politician," she offers keen analyses of military engagements, criticizes political decisions, and provides accounts of the Richmond Bread Riot of 1863 and the inauguration of Jefferson Davis that have been praised by historians. The war brought the battlefield into the house, forcing women into unaccustomed roles and forever changing the old social order.

Empire and Liberty brings together two epic subjects in American history: the story of the struggle to end slavery that reached a violent climax in the Civil War, and the story of the westward expansion of the United States. Virginia Scharff and the contributors to this volume show how the West shaped the conflict over slavery and how slavery shaped the West, in the process defining American ideals about freedom and influencing battles over race, property, and citizenship. This innovative work embraces East and West, as well as North and South, as the United States observes the 2015 sesquicentennial commemoration of the end of the Civil War. A companion volume to an Autry National Center exhibition on the Civil War and the West, Empire and Liberty brings leading historians together to examine artifacts, objects, and artworks that illuminate this period of national expansion, conflict, and renewal.

From Sacagawea's travels with Lewis and Clark to rock groupie Pamela Des Barres's California trips, women have moved across the American West with profound consequences for the people and places they encounter. Virginia Scharff revisits a grand theme of United States history--our restless, relentless westward movement--but sets out in new directions, following women's trails from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. In colorful, spirited stories, she weaves a lyrical reconsideration of the processes that created, gave meaning to, and ultimately shattered the West.
"Twenty Thousand Roads "introduces a cast of women mapping the world on their own terms, often crossing political and cultural boundaries defined by male-dominated institutions and perceptions. Scharff examines the faint traces left by Sacagawea and revisits Susan Magoffin's famed honeymoon journey down the Santa Fe Trail. We also meet educated women like historian Grace Hebard and government extension agent Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, who mapped the West with different voyages and visions. Scharff introduces women whose lives gave shape to the forces of gender, race, region, and modernity; participants in exploration, war, politics, empire, and struggles for social justice; and movers and shakers of everyday family life.
This book powerfully and poetically shows us that to understand the American West, we must examine the lives of women who both built and resisted American expansion. Scharff remaps western history as she reveals how moving women have shaped our past, present, and future.