Books by Susan Ware

In their own voices, the full story of the women and men who struggled to make American democracy wholeWith a record number of female candidates in the 2020 election and women''s rights an increasingly urgent topic in the news, it''s crucial that we understand the history that got us where we are now. For the first time, here is the full, definitive story of the movement for voting rights for American women, of every race, told through the voices of the women and men who lived it. Here are the most recognizable figures in the campaign for women''s suffrage, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, but also the black, Chinese, and American Indian women and men who were not only essential to the movement but expanded its directions and aims. Here, too, are the anti-suffragists who worried about where the country would head if the right to vote were universal. Expertly curated and introduced by scholar Susan Ware, each piece is also introduced by a headnote so that together these 100 selections by over 80 writers tell the full history of the movement--from Abigail Adams to the Declaration of Sentiments to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the limiting of suffrage under Jim Crow. Includes writings by Ida B. Wells, Mabel Lee, Margaret Fuller, Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frederick Douglass, presidents Grover Cleveland on the anti-suffrage side and Woodrow Wilson urging passage of the Nineteenth Amendment as a wartime measure, Jane Addams, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, among many others.

Looking beyond the national leadership of the suffrage movement, Susan Ware tells the inspiring story of nineteen dedicated women who carried the banner for the vote into communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and demonstrating for women's right to become full citizens.

Mary Margaret McBride was one of the first to exploit the cultural and political importance of talk radio, pioneering the magazine-style format of many talk shows. This radio biography recreates the world of daytime radio from the 1930s through the 1950s, confirming the significance of radio to everyday life, especially for women.

"Ware writes that she wanted to `rescue Amelia from the cult of her disappearance,' to replace an impossibly romanticized, martyred enigma with a useful piece of history. Grown-up women of today, aviators, and others, should find this Earhart a more plausible and heartening forerunner." -Amy E. Schwartz, Air & Space

Beyond Suffrage is a study of women who achieved positions of national leadership in the 1930s. Susan Ware discusses the network they established, their attitudes toward feminism and social reform, and the impact they had upon the New Deal's social welfare policies and on Democratic party politics.