Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century [Hardcover]

Susan Ware (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1998

In the tradition of Composing a Life and Writing a Woman's Life, a look at the intimate and public lives of seven strong and vibrant women who had a lasting impact on American popular culture and on women's lives.

In wanting to think through modern women's history, Susan Ware found herself drawn to seven larger-than-life women who influenced not only their professions—politics, journalism, anthropology, acting, sports, dance, and music—but also the way women saw themselves and their options in life. Ware recovers the people behind the legends of Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Mead, Katharine Hepburn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Martha Graham, and Marian Anderson in compelling life stories. She looks at how they created their persona, how they kept themselves in the public eye, and how they did so for so long. She also speaks to how these women balanced their personal lives—choosing lovers and mates and deciding whether to have children. In the choices they made and the success of those choices are lessons relevant to contemporary working women. As part of living exceptional and unconventional lives, they gave other women the ability to desire beyond the limits imposed on women and allowed them to dream and strive for lives of independence and fulfillment.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Anyone awake during the most rudimentary U.S. history lesson has at least a foggy notion about most of the seven American women biographer Susan Ware selected for Letter to the World. Social activist and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is included along with globetrotting journalist Dorothy Thompson, who sent hundreds of dispatches from foreign war zones, and anthropologist Margaret Mead, most famed for the sexual Eden she painted in Coming of Age in Samoa. Rounding out the field are the pithy androgynous actress Katharine Hepburn, outrageously gifted athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, volatile modern-dance pioneer Martha Graham, and opera star Marian Anderson. Ware debunks certain widely touted conceits about her subjects: Dorothy Thompson, for example, never ran off to cover a war dressed in a shimmering evening gown; she stopped off at home to change and pack first. Ware has a zest for these women and has culled many choice quotes by and about them. When asked by reporters if there was anything she didn't play, Didrikson answered succinctly: "Yeah, dolls." Readers who find these thumbnail biographies tantalizing, but too brief to be deeply satisfying, would do well to pick up books such as No Ordinary Time, Blackberry Winter, and My Lord, What a Morning. --Francesca Coltrera

From Publishers Weekly

Ware here gives a feminist reading to the lives of seven 20th-century women, all of whom embodied feminism yet did not espouse it: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, journalist Dorothy Thompson, anthropologist Margaret Mead, actress Katharine Hepburn, athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, dancer Martha Graham and contralto Marian Anderson. Among them only Roosevelt identified publicly with women's issues, whereas most of the others paid lip service to women's traditional role while giving the lie to domesticity in their own lives. Although the profiles are brief they are by no means sketchy, for Ware (Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism) has clearly read so widely about her subjects that she projects a certain intimacy with each, giving readers that same sense as well. The portraits are flattering, even if the author finds Hepburn self-centered, Graham overly aggressive and Anderson a touch saccharine. In these well-rounded pieces, she discusses the probable bisexuality of Roosevelt, Thompson, Zaharias and Mead, which, she suggests, was a part of their autonomy. These women led lives so public and productive they became icons, fittingly so, as Ware documents, and readers will feel enriched to be reacquainted with them. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (June 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393046524
• ISBN-13: 978-0393046526
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,160,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on significant women, June 20, 2003

By 

Frank (Stockton CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century (Paperback)

This is a great book on seven significant women of the 20th Century.
The author has become thoroughly familiar with each of her subjects, and in writing on her subjects, beautifully blends details of her subjects' lives, with thoughtful insights on her subjects' impact on their world, in a very readable fashion.
I picked up the book from the library for its chapter on Marian Anderson. On Ms. Anderson, the author writes that "when an elegant, beautiful black woman like Marian Anderson became a success, and did so with dignity and class, this message undermined the basis for racism in the first place, by revealing a black woman who in every way but her skin color matched the most successful whites." I then continued on to read the portrayals of the other seven women.
Even if you've read multiple biographies on the women portrayed in this book -- Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Mead, Katharine Hepburn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Martha Graham -- you will pick up something new and interesting in the chapters of this book. If some of these women are new to you, you will get to know them as new and interesting friends. I did lean more toward the chapters on the women I was more familiar with -- Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, Katharine Hepburn, and Marian Anderson.