In this lively new biography, an historian argues convincingly that Margaret Sanger deserves the vaunted place in feminist history she once held. Baker's nuanced account of Sanger's life emphasizes the passion of her convictions.

Lucretia Coffin Mott was one of the most famous and controversial women in nineteenth-century America. Now overshadowed by abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mott was viewed in her time as a dominant figure in the dual struggles for racial and sexual equality. History has often depicted her as a gentle Quaker lady and a mother figure, but her outspoken challenges to authority riled ministers, journalists,...

"Early feminist Ernestine Rose, more famous in her time than Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Susan B. Anthony, has been undeservedly forgotten. During the 1850s, Rose was an outstanding orator for women's rights in the United States who became known as "the Queen of the platform." Yet despite her successes and close friendships with other activists, she would gradually be erased from history for being a foreigner, a radical, and, of most concern to her...

"For half a century Sarah Josepha Hale was the best known and most influential woman in America. As editor of Godey's Lady's Book, Hale was the leading cultural arbiter for the growing nation. Women (and many men) turned to her for advice on what to read, what to cook, how to behave, and -- most important -- what to think. Twenty years before the declaration of women's rights in Seneca Falls, N.Y., Sarah Josepha Hale used her powerful pen to build...