Product Description

Historical events of the last three centuries come alive through these women’s singular correspondences—often their only form of public expression. In 1775, Rachel Revere tries to send financial aid to her husband, Paul, in a note that is confiscated by the British; First Lady Dolley Madison tells her sister about rescuing George Washington’s portrait during the War of 1812; one week after JFK’s assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy pens a heartfelt letter to Nikita Khrushchev; and on September 12, 2001, a schoolgirl writes a note of thanks to a
New York City firefighter, asking him, “Were you afraid?”

The letters gathered here also offer fresh insight into the personal milestones in women’s lives. Here is a mid-nineteenth-century missionary describing a mastectomy performed without anesthesia; Marilyn Monroe asking her doctor to spare her ovaries in a handwritten note she taped to her stomach before appendix surgery; an eighteen-year-old telling her mother about her decision to have an abortion the year after Roe v. Wade; and a woman writing to her parents and in-laws about adopting a Chinese baby.

With more than 400 letters and over 100 stunning photographs, Women’s Letters is a work of astonishing breadth and scope, and a remarkable testament to the women who lived–and made–history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99746 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-27
• Released on: 2005-09-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 832 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In Letters of the Century, Grunwald and Adler offered an epistolary romp through American life in the 20th century. Now the husband-and-wife duo turn their considerable talents to the letters of American women. Some of the letters capture grand historical events—e.g., Abigail Adams gushing to husband John about a July 1776 public reading of the Declaration of Independence. At the other end of the timeline are a handful of letters written on or shortly after 9/11. But many letters dwell on the everyday—sickness, loneliness, childrearing. Some of the letters are by obscure women, and some—such as a February 1861 note from "A Lady" warning Abraham Lincoln of a rumored assassination plot—are anonymous. As the editors note, for most of our history, "women simply had no public forum.... Letters... were among their only outlets for recording what they saw, and how they felt...." This is a delightful collection of belles letters in the most literal sense of the term, and a worthy successor to the editors' previous volume.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This collection of more than 400 entries begins with a letter written by Abigail Grant, accusing her husband of cowardice in battle, and ends with an e-mail by Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi on the stark state of affairs in war-torn Iraq. In between, a wide variety of compelling subjects is covered. The letter Amelia Earhart presented to her husband on their wedding day detailing her terms for the marriage is included as are the send-a-dime chain letter sent more than a billion times during the Depression and a letter addressed to Michael Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission, complaining about the winner of Fox Network's 2003 American Idol competition. The book is divided by time period, and each section is illustrated with black-and-white graphics representative of the age. The letters are accompanied by information about the topics included, biographical details about the author and the recipient, and other interesting facts.–Debra Shumate, Bull Run Regional Library, Manassas, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
"I am ready to place a Company of fifty Lady sharpshooters at your disposal," Annie Oakley wrote to William McKinley in the lead-up to the Spanish-American War. Though the president didn't take her up on the offer, it's typical of the pluck and plain-speaking revealed in the letters of American women over the centuries.

War bookends this carefully culled collection, with a letter from Rachel Revere to her husband, Paul, as the first letter and an e-mail from a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Iraq as the last. Threaded throughout are eye-opening accounts of every other American war: "I expected to deliver my country but the fates would not have it so," a Union soldier known to us only as Emily, disguised as a man, wrote to her father as she lay dying after the Battle of Lookout Mountain in 1863. "My native soil drinks my blood."

Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler -- she a novelist, he the editor-in-chief of Business Week -- have managed to find women who provided first-person reports on most of the major events in American history. This is no easy task. Considered unimportant by generations of scholars, women's letters have been lost by families, ignored by libraries and buried in historical societies. The editors' ability to unearth so many on such a wide-range of topics is a testament to their tenacity.

They located a letter from a woman who was in Ford's Theatre the night Lincoln was shot and from one who was in the Washington train station after President James Garfield was assassinated. There are accounts from eyewitnesses to the Chicago fire of 1871, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911, the Kent State shootings of 1970 and the mass suicide at Jonestown in 1978. (The last was found next to the body of a nurse in the cult's compound.)

Presented chronologically, with short introductions to each epistle, the sections begin with iconic images of the era and some snappy facts: "1900: The United States population is 76,212,168. . . . Women occupy a third of all government jobs. L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." By headlining major historical moments as well as cultural phenomena, these brief passages add context to the letters ahead.

Letters to and about presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- are often revealing. The former slave and preacher Sojourner Truth in a dictated letter revealed that when she told Abraham Lincoln in 1864 that she had never heard of him before he ran for president, "he smilingly replied, 'I had heard of you many times before that.' " As the Democratic Convention convened in 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson was having second thoughts about running for president, until Lady Bird intervened: "To step out now would be wrong for your country, and I can see nothing but a lonely waste land for your future." Even more striking is a note from Jacqueline Kennedy to Nikita Khrushchev the week after her husband's assassination: "You and he were adversaries, but you were also allies in your determination not to let the world be blown up."

The famous are well-represented here, with letters from actors and artists and entertainers such as Marilyn Monroe, Mary Cassatt and Joan Baez, who informed the IRS in 1964 that she refused to finance the Vietnam War. Not surprisingly, letters to and from writers also occupy many of these pages. My personal favorite: Louisa May Alcott delivering her first novel to the publisher in 1868, noting that "I think 'Little Women' had better be the title."

The infamous show up as well. A husband-killer begged for the life of her unborn child in 1775; Jean Harris raved to her lover, Herman Tarnower of Scarsdale Diet fame, two days before she killed him in 1980; Nicole Brown Simpson ranted to O.J. Simpson in 1992; and an ABC News producer tried to "book" the Unabomber in 1999.

The "celebrity interview" is just one of the many cultural trends covered. In these pages are fans of Elvis and the Beatles; a young woman telling her mother she's moving in with her boyfriend and a woman coming out as gay. At their heart, these letters are uniquely female. In longing for romance during the Revolution, fearing pregnancy on the frontier, rebuffing a pass in the dentist's chair, agonizing over abortion, enduring fertility treatments or fighting the "mommy wars," the feelings of these women as women are recognizable over the centuries.

Here are heartwarming and heartbreaking stories, heartache suffered and inflicted (Marge to Walter in World War II: "I don't know how to tell you this but you need to know! I met this really nice guy, he drives a blue ford convertible"), history told and repeated. Margaret Mitchell answered "No" when asked if she wrote Gone With the Wind with the Depression in mind, but she added, "I feel that the same qualities of courage are needed when, at any period of history, a world turns over. And the same qualities of gentleness and idealism are needed too." Those qualities appear in abundance in these women's letters.

Reviewed by Cokie Roberts
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

A social history shaped through the correspondence of women
Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler, the powerhouse couple behind LETTERS OF THE CENTURY --- and now WOMEN'S LETTERS --- make history both accessible and captivating, presenting it in the format of correspondences written throughout our nation's history. With this epistolary approach Grunwald and Adler illuminate the events that molded and defined America.

LETTERS OF THE CENTURY looked at the writings of men and women over the course of a century. With WOMEN'S LETTERS, the editors have narrowed their focus and broadened their time frame, but by no means have they restricted their scope. Indeed, by presenting letters written solely by women --- to their sisters, their husbands, their friends and lovers --- Grunwald and Adler have only heightened the impact of their detailed and meticulous presentation of history.

In school we are forced to memorize the "dates, monarchs, generals and macro issues" and thus we associate history with a kind of teeth-grinding tedium and exam-related anxiety. History can be overwhelming and alienating --- much of what we learn about the rise and fall of civilizations, the birth and growth of nations, felt utterly separate and un-relatable when we were in school, and that feeling of being divided from our nation's past has endured. By drawing us into the minutiae, WOMEN'S LETTERS renders the "macro issues" both lucid and graspable. There is something deeply revelatory and ultimately reassuring about this conception of a past.

Beginning in 1775 and ending in 2005, the letters collected in this volume deal with themes that are vastly different and yet transcendent. They are snapshots of the lives of women from a wide range of educations, experiences, racial and economic backgrounds. From Martha Washington to Anais Nin to Betty Freidan, these letters reveal much about women we have heard about, women we thought we knew, and women whose voices resound and defy their obscurity. Every one of these women has something to say. The letters bring them together, revealing the themes that run parallel in their lives.

Loneliness, anger, loss, birth, death --- all these concepts pulse through the 760 pages of WOMEN'S LETTERS, and they are still deeply relevant today. This rich stew of transcendent ideas and inevitable truths in the lives of women serves both to link the singular letter writers revealed within these pages and establish a common ground with each individual reader. We all will find something that resonates deep within us in these pages --- some sentiment that sings.

Those who loathe the study of history with facts and data will appreciate this work. It reminded this reviewer of a line from the historical fiction novelist Jacqueline Winspear, who said, "I have always been far more interested in social history, the details of how ordinary people lived, how they were impacted by the events of the time...I could easily sleep through a whole lesson on the parliamentary acts of Elizabeth I, but tell me that her teeth were completely black and I'm listening." It is the minute details, the very specific individual experience, that these letters portray. The resulting work is authoritative, but not textbook.

WOMEN'S LETTERS is not a "women's book" and it should not be thought of as such. Indeed it is crucially important for men to dip into these pages as well and glimpse lives that unfolded in drawing rooms, bedrooms, kitchens and behind closed doors. Men and women equally will find inspiration in the words of these women that for so long went unheard.

The elocution and attention to detail, form and grace that typify so many of the letters written before the mid-20th century bespeak the very lack of those qualities in contemporary correspondence. As technical advancements propel us to a kind of hyper-efficiency, we have lost the need to devote time and craft to communication. The actual implications of the phrase "letter-writing is a lost art" can only be fully examined when we are aware just how artful the creation of a letter can be. WOMEN'S LETTERS demands that its readers question just what we have given up in exchange for that efficiency.

And when readers do flip through the last 80 or so pages, dated 1980-2005, they will be jarred not just by the dominating artlessness that has overtaken the form, but by the relative loss of humanity these letters depict. Where the letters of the preceding pages established humanity on a grand scale, with a few notable exceptions, these last pages of letters searingly depict a growing trend of inhumanity. From the plaintive words of Nicole Brown Simpson writing to her husband to the rage-fueled preaching of an abortion clinic bomber writing to the Pensacola News, there is something deeply unsettling about such a stark display of human frailty. These last few pages beg the question: What have we, as a nation and as a people, lost as we have stopped writing?

The question may sound dire, but the conversation that can follow it is a vital one. It is a multi-ethnic, multi-gendered, all-encompassing conversation that should be had among parents and children, among friends and across the dinner table. Grunwald and Adler have tapped a well-spring of potential dialogue and their collection is a mighty conversation-starter. And despite its physical and intellectual weight, it is a breathtakingly easy read. A book that is meant to be dipped into, at random perhaps, savored for an hour, an afternoon, alone or read aloud --- it demands no rigorous examination; the potency of the words on the page are not dependent on the fashion by which they are read.

WOMEN'S LETTERS does more than just reveal the blackened teeth; it looks deep under the skin and into the minds of the women who quietly --- and not so quietly --- shaped and were shaped by our nation's history.

--- Reviewed by Jennifer Krieger

Seeing history from an amazing perspective
Reading someone else's old letters can evoke universal feelings and can even bring to life a time before we were born. This is what happens in "Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present," edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler. In more than 800 pages, the editors compiled women's letters from 1775 up to and including the current war in Iraq. The letter writers include slave owners, slaves, politicians, movie stars, moms and daughters. There are love letters, a "last will and testament" and eyewitness accounts of historic events. For me, the most unusual was from Marilyn Monroe, who taped a handwritten note to her stomach before having her appendix out, begging her doctor to "cut as little as possible." I also got caught up in the World War II letters from a Japanese American wife housed in a separate internment camp from her husband. This is a fascinating way to see America through its cultural and political changes and observe the changing roles of women.

A great gift for a woman...
I bought this book for my mother, who enjoys it very much. Its easy reading, but powerful, insightful, and uplifting. Highly recommended.