Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century
- Book Review,
by Susan Ware
Amazon.com
Anyone awake during the most rudimentary U.S. history lesson has at least a foggy notion about most of the seven American women biographer Susan Ware selected for Letter to the World. Social activist and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is included along with globetrotting journalist Dorothy Thompson, who sent hundreds of dispatches from foreign war zones, and anthropologist Margaret Mead, most famed for the sexual Eden she painted in Coming of Age in Samoa. Rounding out the field are the pithy androgynous actress Katharine Hepburn, outrageously gifted athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, volatile modern-dance pioneer Martha Graham, and opera star Marian Anderson. Ware debunks certain widely touted conceits about her subjects: Dorothy Thompson, for example, never ran off to cover a war dressed in a shimmering evening gown; she stopped off at home to change and pack first. Ware has a zest for these women and has culled many choice quotes by and about them. When asked by reporters if there was anything she didn't play, Didrikson answered succinctly: "Yeah, dolls." Readers who find these thumbnail biographies tantalizing, but too brief to be deeply satisfying, would do well to pick up books such as No Ordinary Time, Blackberry Winter, and My Lord, What a Morning. --Francesca Coltrera
From Publishers Weekly
Ware here gives a feminist reading to the lives of seven 20th-century women, all of whom embodied feminism yet did not espouse it: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, journalist Dorothy Thompson, anthropologist Margaret Mead, actress Katharine Hepburn, athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, dancer Martha Graham and contralto Marian Anderson. Among them only Roosevelt identified publicly with women's issues, whereas most of the others paid lip service to women's traditional role while giving the lie to domesticity in their own lives. Although the profiles are brief they are by no means sketchy, for Ware (Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism) has clearly read so widely about her subjects that she projects a certain intimacy with each, giving readers that same sense as well. The portraits are flattering, even if the author finds Hepburn self-centered, Graham overly aggressive and Anderson a touch saccharine. In these well-rounded pieces, she discusses the probable bisexuality of Roosevelt, Thompson, Zaharias and Mead, which, she suggests, was a part of their autonomy. These women led lives so public and productive they became icons, fittingly so, as Ware documents, and readers will feel enriched to be reacquainted with them. Photos. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ware (Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, LJ 11/15/93) considers the lives of seven women who had an exceptional impact on 20th-century American culture and society's perception of the role of women: Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Mead, Katharine Hepburn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Martha Graham, and Marian Anderson. In addition to focusing on outstanding achievements in their chosen fields, Ware looks at their often unconventional private lives, the public personas they forged, and how they maintained the public's interest through the media. The lives of all seven women have been the subject of much previous research, as Ware's well-documented notes show. What is unique here is bringing them together and comparing their stands on issues such as feminism, equal rights, choosing motherhood, and aging. While one might wish the author had omitted the fanciful introduction that has the seven women "auditioning" for their parts, this book is both informative and entertaining. Recommended for biography, history, and women's studies collections.?Joan W. Gartland, Detroit P.L.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Ware profiles the lives of seven remarkable women who significantly influenced the course of twentieth-century social history and popular culture. In order to select a representative group of celebrated women, the author scoured the fields of politics, film, sports, journalism, social sciences, and the arts in search of likely candidates. Focusing on subjects whose personal and professional paths broke barriers and set new standards for modern women, she offers brief biographical sketches of Eleanor Roosevelt, Katharine Hepburn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Mead, Martha Graham, and Marian Anderson. Digestible portraits of these women include relevant background information, career highlights, and tantalizing glimpses into their often troubled and unconventional personal lives. Assisted by an increasingly influential media, these women packaged and presented themselves to the America public as popular and wholesome role models. This appealing collective biography will be a welcome addition to women's studies collections. Margaret Flanagan
From Kirkus Reviews
Profiles of a handful of women who have influenced American culture and politics. Ware (Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, 1993) starts her book with an ambitious premise. Drawing on the lives of seven outsize leaders in the realms of politics, journalism, anthropology, acting, sports, dance, and music, she sets out to explicate the often difficult relations between private and public faced by American women. Though well-trod territory, the subject is perennially fascinating. However, the way she chooses to present these women--Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Mead, Katharine Hepburn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Martha Graham, and Marian Andersonpresupposes an intimate knowledge of them not necessarily shared by the reader. She puts out a casting call for ``strong, independent characters''--a device that lends a chummy tone to the book that doesnt necessarily make up for lack of documentation. As she launches into each profile, she explores these women's professional lives as well as their personal relationships, and therein lies the problem. With the exception of Dorothy Thompson, substantial biographies have already been devoted to Ware's subjects. Therefore, one cannot escape the feeling that more nuanced portraits of these women can be found elsewhere. By trying to place them under a larger canopy, Ware corners herself into writing synopses of the women's lives: Eleanor Roosevelt had ``a need to love and to be loved''; Dorothy Thompson ``worked hard to make it as a woman in a man's world''; Martha Graham had a ``primal fear of being outside the limelight,'' etc. The result is a few illuminating anecdotes, a brief analysis from the author on the psyches of her subjects, and an explanation of why these women were important. What is missing is the continuous thread that can tie all these women together, and the lesson women in America today can take from these pioneers. Its not for lack of material that Ware fails to deliver what she promises. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
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.
About the Author
Susan Ware lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. She is the author of Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism (Norton) and editor of Notable American Women, Vol. 5.
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