Five New Books On Women’s Suffrage Everyone Should Read

1. Ellen Carol DuBois. Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote. Simon & Schuster, 2020.

   “The best book on the U.S. women’s suffrage movement for the general reader. For anyone interested in but not highly conversant with the history of the United States movement, this is the ideal book by one of the nation’s leading historians of the struggle…. If a reader seeks a large amount of knowledge inside a beautifully written tale that can be read in several days at most, this is the book to choose.” Amazon Review

2. Martha S. Jones. Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Basic Books, September 2020.

   “Martha Jones is the political historian of African American women. And this book is the commanding history of the remarkable struggle of African American women for political power.... All Americans would be better off learning this history and grasping just how much we owe equality’s vanguard.” Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award winner

3. Kate Clarke Lemay, ed. Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence. Princeton University Press, 2019.

   “Weaving together a diverse collection of portraits and other visual materials—including photographs, drawings, paintings, prints, textiles, and mixed media—along with biographical narratives and trenchant essays, this comprehensive book presents fresh perspectives on the history of the movement…. With nearly 200 color illustrations…. Published in association with the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.” press.princeton.edu

4. Lisa Tetrault. The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898. University of North Carolina, 2014.

   “This provocative work challenges the standard narrative of the history of the women’s rights movement in the United States. Even more important, however, it aids readers in understanding how collective historical memory is created and shaped…. Fascinating…. Recommended for scholars in women’s history, constitutional history, and late 19th-century American history.” Library Journal

5. Elaine Weiss. The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. Viking, 2018.

   “Weiss is a clear and genial guide with an ear for telling language.… She also shows a superb sense of detail, and it’s the deliciousness of her details that suggests certain individuals warrant entire novels of their own… Weiss’s thoroughness is one of the book’s great strengths. So vividly had she depicted events that by the climactic vote (spoiler alert: The amendment was ratified!), I got goose bumps.” Curtis Sittenfeld, The New York Times Book Review

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