This masterful biography by one of America's foremost historians of women tells the story of Florence Kelley, a leading reformer in the Progressive Era. The book is also a political history of the United States during a period of transforming change when women worked to end the abuses of unregulated industrial capitalism. In the first of two volumes, Sklar describes how earlier generations set the stage for women's centrality in the 1890s and depicts the first forty years of Florence Kelley's life.
"Engrossing.... Based on voluminous research (and) written with a compelling narrative command.... Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work is a model of biography that captures the subject while using her to illuminate historical processes of which her life was part". -- Dana Frank, The Nation
"Sklar has added richly to the history of women who have done, as she puts it, the nation's work". -- Dorothy Gallagher, New York Times Book Review
"A stunning achievement ... (a) detailed, telling, and extensive analysis.... Magisterial". -- Lois Scharf, Reviews in American History
