Regis: Women's History Month

"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...

"They didn't ask to be remembered," historian Ulrich wrote in 1976 about the pious women of colonial New England. And then she added a phrase that has since gained widespread currency: "Well-behaved women seldom make history." Today those words appear on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and more--but what do they really mean? Here, Ulrich ranges over centuries and cultures, from the fifteenth-century writer Christine de Pizan, who imagined a world in which...

"Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis. In The Red Tent, Anita Diamant brings this fascinating biblical character to vivid life. Told in Dinah's voice, the novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of Dinah's mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of...

A Chinese woman chronicles the struggle of her grandmother, her mother, and herself to survive in a China torn apart by wars, invasions, revolution, and continuing upheaval, from 1907 to the present.

Pulitzer Prize Finalist: “A stunning work of biography” about three little-known New England women who made intellectual history (The New York Times).
Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody were in many ways the American Brontës. The story of these remarkable sisters—and their central role in shaping the thinking of their day—has never before been fully told. Twenty years in the making, Megan Marshall’s...

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir's masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of "woman," and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir's pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it...

In the struggle for womenʼs equality, there is one hurdle that has yet to be fully cleared-the myth of female beauty. It challenges every woman, every day, by seeking to undermine psychologically and covertly the material freedoms that feminism has achieved for women. And, fueled by new technology in media and medicine, its ravages are reaching epidemic proportions. The Beauty Myth cuts to the root of the ʺbeauty backlash,ʺ exposing the relentless...

"The Belles of New England is the story of one group of pioneers in the American labor movement - the thousands of women who left New England farm towns to work in the textile cities that sprang up in the region in the early nineteenth century. Their goal was to achieve personal independence, their mission social justice. At a time when women had no political influence, they battled powerful mill owners for fair pay and decent working conditions."--Jacket....