Books like Mothers of invention by Drew Gilpin Faust

Alice Walker's 1982 novel, The Color Purple, won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, exploring the lives of black women in the South and their experiences of abuse and struggle for independence.

In post‑war New York, Newland Archer faces a dilemma when his fiancée’s cousin, the rebellious Ellen Olenska, challenges his elite society’s expectations and his own loyalty.

Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay argues for women writers’ rightful place in a patriarchal literary tradition, using both fictional narrative and lecture recordings.

Betty Friedan’s 1963 classic uncovers the invisible barriers that kept women confined to domestic roles, sparking a cultural awakening that reshaped ideas about equality and personal fulfillment in the United States.

Michelle Obama chronicles her life from South Side Chicago to the White House, revealing the personal drive behind her public advocacy for women, families, and health.

Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offer a misleading picture. In "Women of the Klan," sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice. "All the better people," a former Klanswoman assures us, were in the Klan. During the 1920s, perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant women joined the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race, nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles were often progressive. The Klan publicly asserted that a women's order could safeguard women's suffrage and expand their other legal rights. Privately the WKKK was working to preserve white Protestant supremacy. Blee draws from extensive archival research and interviews with former Klan members and victims to underscore the complexity of extremist right-wing political movements. Issues of women's rights, she argues, do not fit comfortably into the standard dichotomies of "progressive" and "reactionary." These need to be replaced by a more complete understanding of how gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class.

The book profiles courageous women who served as spies, daughters of regiments, or disguised soldiers during the American Civil War, including Belle Boyd, Annie Etheridge, and Sarah Emma Edmonds.

Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore explores how Southern women shaped and were shaped by the Civil War and Reconstruction, using diaries, letters, and court records to reveal their political and social agency.