Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating melange of historical names and events., August 11, 1999
What an absolute joy of a book. Goldsmith seems to have found the perfect centerof the femininist storm in Victoria Woodhull, an outspoken advocate of women's rights, free love, and spiritualism. The telling of her tale (and this book reads like a plotted novel) involves the inclusion of tales and talk from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Henry Ward Beecher, President Ulysses S. Grant, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, and cameo appearances from a host of others (including the prudish New York City "in"fighter, Anthony Comstock). Much of the telling involves the infamous Tilton-Beecher scandal, a story whose recitation touches on much of the post-Civil War atmosphere of spiritualism,financial skullduggery, the new religious practices of revised Calvinism, and, of course, equal rights for women. This is a fascinating read and wonderfully written. You don't need to be a history buff to pick this up.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Treasure Chest of Fascinating, Little-Known History, January 16, 2002
Goldsmith has done a real service with this book. It is more or less the history of the 19th-century women's suffrage movement, with special emphasis on the influence of Spiritualism and on the life of Victoria Woodhull (of whom I had never before heard, even though I regard myself as fairly well-versed in American history).The book is full of fascinating characters and events, most of which are given unconscionably short shrift in our educational system. Goldsmith fleshes out the stories and personalities of many people who were previously just vague images in my mind, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Henry Ward Beecher. It seems from this book that female suffrage could have occurred as much as 50 years earlier than it did, if it hadn't been for a couple of missteps on the part of the supporters of suffrage. For one thing, there was a bitter division among the suffragettes about whether the female right to vote should be part of the movement for enfranchising the recently freed slaves. Sadly, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, despite her many wonderful and even heroic contributions to the movement, comes across as an out-and-out racist on this issue, and probably damaged the very cause to which she devoted her life. Secondly, some of the foremost spokespeople for female suffrage got caught up in unrelated, controversial issues, and even in personal sexual scandals. If you have an interest in American history, you may very well have the same reaction I did while reading this book. Almost every other page, I found myself exclaiming, "Hey, I didn't know that! How come that's not in any of the history books?" The only reason I gave this book four stars instead of five is that I think the organization and focus could be a little better. The book isn't organized strictly chronologically, and it jumps from one character to another without apparent reason. But there's just too much really good stuff here to give anything less than four stars, and I have no quarrel with those who have given it five. You won't often pick up a book written for a general audience and learn so many interesting facts that you probably didn't know.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eye opening book, December 2, 1999
This is a terrific read -- fast paced, racy, with an unbelievable cast of actual historical characters dealing with issues like free love and marriage. Meticulously researched, it provides a more complete picture of the lives of both ordinary and leading women and the strictures of 19th century polite and not-so-polite society than most historical books I've read. I have found it very difficult to put down. It has provided me with a picture of the 1800's, women's lives and the struggle for women's rights that I was very ignorant about before. I wasn't really interested in the topic of women's issues until I started to read this book, but it has opened my eyes to how far we have come, where some of our society's problems are rooted, and how far we have to go.
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by Ronald Enroth
