Women

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women is the story of Brooks’ intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils.....

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial....

Women were there. For centuries, discussions of early Christianity have focused on male leaders in the church. But there is ample evidence right in the New Testament that women were actively involved in ministry, at the frontier of the gospel mission, and as respected leaders....

Let Sandi Toksvig guide you on an eclectic meander through the calendar, illuminating neglected corners of history to tell tales of the fascinating figures you didn't learn about at school....

The imprisonment and execution of Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, in 1536 was unprecedented in English history and never before has there been a book devoted entirely to her fall.

Historian Deborah J. Swiss tells the heartbreaking, horrifying, and ultimately triumphant story of the women exiled from the British Isles and forced into slavery and savagery—who created the most liberated society of their time.

A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women's beauty, sexuality, and behavior....

This riveting narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra - women who ruled with real power - and shines a piercing light on our own perceptions of women in power today....

Sara Lodge offers a revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account—and how they became a cultural sensation.

When they fell in love in 1928, Rika and Waldemar could have not been more different. She was a thirty-seven-year-old Dutch-born mother, estranged from her husband. He was her immigrant boarder, not yet twenty, and a wealthy Surinamese descendant of slaves....

Women have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work....

Acclaimed critic and TtT co-founder Ann Powers and contributor Alison Fensterstock draw from every Turning the Tables season and the full 50-years of NPR archives to bring a vibrant, entertaining history of women in folk, rock, rap, hip hop, salsa, bubblegum pop, and much more.

A leading Renaissance scholar shows in this revisionist history how four powerful women redefined the culture of European monarchy in the glorious 16th century.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them - women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.....

This is the incredible true story of the greatest spy you’ve never heard of - as told to the author by the woman herself. At the outbreak of World War Two, Nancy Wake’s glamorous life in the South of France seemed far removed from the fighting....

Plantagenet Princesses examines the lives of two daughters that highlights the dichotomy of lives of royal women, as both daughters and mothers of kings, who also knew both prison and power....

Revealing ten steps to self-mastery, Unbounded offers a path towards active growth, fearless self-love and liberation....

Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how 19th-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals....

Sex workers in 19th-century Melbourne were judged morally corrupt by the respectable world around them. But theirs was a thriving trade, with links to the police and political leaders of the day, and the leading brothels were usually managed by women....

A groundbreaking history of women in British intelligence, Women in Intelligence reveals their pivotal role across the first half of the twentieth century....

The Slow Moon Climbs casts menopause, at last, in the positive light it deserves - not only as an essential life stage, but also as a key factor in the history of human flourishing....

In How to Think Like a Woman, Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell the stories of four women, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy. This is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally....

From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things comes a wondrous collection of words that is a moving meditation on the beauty and complexity of women’s lives and roles, revealed in the things they hold.

The harrowing, dramatic and profoundly moving story of the Australian and New Zealand nurses who served in the Great War....

Sisters in Captivity is the incredible account of Sister Betty Jeffrey OAM and the Australian war nurses who survived the bombing of hospital ship SS Vyner Brooke in February 1942, and subsequently spent three years in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra....

In her first book, popular TikTok historian J Draper uses her characteristic wit and intellect to introduce us to extraordinary figures marginalized by history, and the lessons we can learn from them. Witty and engaging TikTok historian J.D. Draper digs out unusual stories of individuals that have shaped the world, and discovers the lessons their unique experiences can teach us. Breaking away from history as told through the lens of kings, queens and nobles, this book instead lifts the lid on 24 fascinating stories of little-known underdogs, mavericks, trailblazers and oddballs.

In Gioia Diliberto's take on this period of history, we meet Ella Boole, the stern and ambitious leader of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, who campaigned to introduce Prohibition. We also meet Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who served as the top federal prosecutor charged with enforcing Prohibition. Diliberto tells the story, too, of silent film star Texas Guinan, who ran New York speakeasies backed by the mob and showed that Prohibition was not only absurd but unenforceable. And, she follows Pauline Morton Sabin, a glamorous Manhattan aristocrat who mobilized the movement to kill it.

New motherhood is often seen as a joyful moment in a woman's life; for some women, it is also their lowest moment. For much of the twentieth century, popular and medical voices blamed women who had emotional and mental distress after childbirth for their own suffering. By the end of the century, though, women with postpartum mental illnesses sought to take charge of this narrative. In Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America, Rachel Louise Moran explores the history of the naming and mainstreaming of postpartum depression.

In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses listeners in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered Black Panther Party member, as well as a mother, widow, educator, poet, and former political prisoner. In 1969, the police arrested Ericka Huggins along with Bobby Seale and fellow Black Panther Party members, who were accused of murdering Alex Rackley. This marked the beginning of her ordeal, as she became the subject of political persecution and a well-planned FBI COINTELPRO plot.

Step into a world of love, resilience, and unity with The Magnificent 7 Sisterhood. This captivating memoir chronicles the extraordinary lives of seven sisters raised in 1930s Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Born to Elma Helena Wolterding-Smith of St. Thomas, USVI, and her husband Clarence, these sisters forged a profound bond that transcended the challenges of their time, becoming a lifelong legacy of compassion and togetherness.