Category: History

Posted in Books, History, Nonfiction, Science, Uncategorized, Women Writers

A List of Books I Couldn’t Find

Posted on by beckylevine

Yesterday, I went book shopping. I went to one of my favorite stores, where they are wonderful and helpful and where I almost always find something I haven’t seen that looks like something I want to read. I was looking for a book to give as a gift.

But it’s not a big store, and they only have so much shelf space, and I was–for various rambling reasons (some about the giftee, some about me)–looking for a very specific type of book, one that met a list of requirements I had decided on.

Those requirements were:

1. The book had to at least look like it would be written well.

2. The book had to be nonfiction, preferably Science or History.

3. The book couldn’t be heavy or dark. One of the purposes of the gift was to serve as a distraction/escape from today’s heavy and dark.

4. If the book was a history book, it had to be about a woman or multiple women, and it had to be written by a woman. If it was a science book, it had to at least be written by a woman.

Guess which one was the stumper.

Were there history and science books about women?

Yes.

Were there history and science books by women?

Yes.

Were there history and science books about AND by women?

A few. And the ones I found didn’t meet the first three requirements. Was it a sign of the times that I got more and more frustrated at all the books I found about women that were written by men? Absolutely? Was it fair? In some ways yes; in some ways no–I had much less of a problem with finding books about men written by women (although there were a lot fewer, so…you know.) Do I think men should be able to write nonfiction about women and women should be able to write nonfiction about men. Sure. I can instantly give you examples of two excellent books that fall under that umbrella: ‘They say’: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race by James West Davidson and Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.

Still. None of this helped my frustration last night. So I did some browsing, and the giftee is going to Chrysalis: Maria Sibyalla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd. It’s going on my to-read list as well.

And I came across some other titles that, while I haven’t looked to see if they meet requirements 1 and 3; they do meet requirements 2 and 4. And I decided to post a list of these books, the ones I couldn’t find last night, to make me happy and–possibly–to help someone else on their search.

Science

Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space* by Janna Levin

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History* by Elizabeth Kolbert

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus

Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas that Reveal the Cosmos* by Priyamvada Natarajan

A Big Bang in a Little Room: The Quest to Create New Universes* by Zeeya Merali

Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry* by Christie Wilcox

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe* by Lisa Randall

Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life* by Helen Czerski

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions: from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond* by Sonia Shah

The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance* by Nessa Carey

Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, A Daughter, The Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything by Amanda Gefter

*I found very few lists that included only women writers of science, so I want to give credit to the one excellent one I did find. These books are all from Swapna Krishna’s Bustle post, “9 Science Books Written by Women To Read When You Need A Break From Fiction.”

 

History

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly  (The bookstore did have this, but I figured it was high odds the giftee would have already read it.)

Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World by Linda Hirshman

Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keisha N. Blain

Ada The Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age by Betty A. Toole

The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem by Stacy Schiff

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin

When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak

Irish Nationalist Women: 1900-1918 by Senia Paseta

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reid

Mother is a Verb: An Unconventional History by Sarah Knott

Posted in History

Sad News: Hull-House Closes

Posted on by beckylevine

One more social service bites the dust. I could let this post become a rant about the economy and the state of the nation and the government, but I’m not going to go there. Mostly because the sadness I feel is less practical. It’s not like I don’t know what cuts are doing to people who really need help, all over the place–not just in Chicago. It’s not like, if you listen to the news, see what’s going on, that this would even come as a surprise.

Still…gut punch.

I’ve spent the last few years doing research, reading, about Jane Addams and Hull-House. I visited the museum (and the museum is not closing) a couple of years ago, and was delighted to find myself not in a stuffy, dark old building, but a light, airy place that I could easily imagine still reflected Addams’ taste and personality, where I could pretend Addams herself might come down the stairs at any minute.

So my response to the news is kind of self-centered, or at least Addams-centered. I’m thinking about how she would have felt to see this end, to see all she worked for–against all odds–go away. As wonderful and well-deserved a memorial as the museum is, I really don’t think it was Addams’ end goal–to have a museum. Her goal was to get to know all these people, the neighbors she “settled” near when she started Hull-House, and to help them. And today, the thing she built, the thing that–if I were talking about someone with less vision than Addams–I would say grew beyond anything she could have imagined, that thing is gone.

Except I can hear her scolding me as I type this, shaking her head, maybe even smiling and laughing at me just a little. Because it’s not gone. You know that everybody involved in Hull-House is miserable about this; you know that they and all the services in Chicago are going to be working to connect up with all the people who still need help.  Yes, Jane Addams was a phenomenon, an inspiration, but caring and action didn’t start with her, and they didn’t end when she died. I know this.

Still…such a loss.

This article in the Chicago Tribune talks about the closure, and you can listen to a brief piece on NPR about it, as well. If you want to know more about Hull-House and Jane Addams, of course, you should read her book Twenty Years at Hull-House, if only to hear Jane’s own voice talk about her venture. Another wonderful book is Hilda Polacheck’s memoir I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl. I also highly recommend Louise W. Knight’s Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, which is one of the most interesting biographies I’ve ever read, talking as it does about the people Addams met and the works she read, then dissecting and analyzing how they played into her ideas and idealogy.

Finally, of course, if you’re in Chicago, do stop in at the Hull-House museum. Touch base with Jane Addams, and all that she meant, if only for a few minutes.

Posted in Historical Fiction, History

Historical Fiction: Keeping the Background from Taking Over the Foreground

Posted on by beckylevine

I just thought of two historical novels I need to go back and reread, and they’re both by Rita Mae Brown. The first is High Hearts–a Civil War Novel, and the second is Dolley–novel about Dolley Madison. I read both these books while I was living in Charlottesville, Virginia, and both–especially High Hearts–blew me away. This was decades before I ever thought I’d be writing historical fiction myself.

And now here I am, thinking about how I want to play with/work with this genre and guessing that if I want to see some of the best possible example of how to do it right, I should open these books again. (Oh, darn. Such a chore!)

Because guess what I remember about those books? The stories.

Not the history.

Yes, of course, I read about battles in High Hearts, and I “saw” the White House burn in Dolley. Real people walked through all the pages of Dolley, and there is one scene from High Hearts that I feel pretty sure was based on a true event, because I’m not sure anyone, even Brown, could imagine that horror. (No spoilers, go read the books!)
 
Overall, though, I’m pretty sure (it’s been a couple of decades since I turned those pages) Brown placed the history of the time into the background of the books. The wars and the government officials and the soldiers and the ladies are part of the setting. And, in a way, they all weave together to create a single character you could just call Era. Or The Times. Of course those elements interact with the primary characters, of course they affect the plot. But they are not the story. The story is what Brown’s main characters–one fiction and one fictionalized–do.
 
I’m reminding myself of this as I plot. I’m focusing on my hero again, looking at her actions and her problems. I’m not shedding all the history she moves through, but I’m trying to think of her as an individual. Yes, some of her conflict is because of the times in which she lives, but it’s important that I could pick her up from those times and put her down in some other, and she’d still be who she is, down in her bones.
 
Luckily, I still have High Hearts on the shelf. Time to get another copy of Dolley. And time for you guys, whether or not you’re writing historical fiction, to check out both novels for yourself!
Posted in History, Research

Five Historic Tidbits on a Friday

Posted on by beckylevine

Been deep in lovely research all week. Here are a few things I’ve learned about being an immigrant on your way to Chicago in the early twentieth century

  1. You might not make it. The Immigrants’ Protective League kept stats on how many girls were supposedly put on a train to Chicago, from their port of entry, and didn’t get there. Some they found. Some they didn’t.
  2. The address you had for your family might not be real, might be wrong, or might have had a change of residents three times over since you got it.
  3. You were very likely to have lost track of your luggage, including the feather bed you’d brought with you.
  4. You were put on a train to be “fair” to the railways, even if it meant a few extra days of travel. Say there were 10 railways with trains leaving your port of entry and going to Chicago, with various and sundry stops along the way. Say there were 500 immigrants that day on their ways to Chicago. 50 immigrants went on each train, even if it meant heading down to Norfolk, Virginia, then back up to Chicago. If you didn’t bring enough food for the extra legs of the journey, oh, well.
  5. If you were one of the lucky ones, someone from the Immigrant Protective League was at the station, or across the street in their offices, to greet you in your own language and help you find your way through the maze of confusion to your new home. With a bed to stay in for a few days, if needed, while they tracked down that address or that family. And found you a job.

Because, at that point, the government sure wasn’t going to help you.