The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, Elaine Weiss

The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote

Elaine Weiss

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 11 reviews on

BookMarks logo
"Both a page-turning drama and an inspiration for every reader" -- Hillary Rodham Clinton

The nail-biting climax of one of the greatest political battles in American history: the ratification of the constitutional amendment that granted women the right to vote.

Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have approved the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote; one last state--Tennessee--is needed for women's voting rights to be the law of the land. The suffragists face vicious opposition from politicians, clergy, corporations, and racists who don't want black women voting. And then there are the "Antis"--women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the nation's moral collapse. And in one hot summer, they all converge for a confrontation, replete with booze and blackmail, betrayal and courage. Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, The Woman's Hour is the gripping story of how America's women won their own freedom, and the opening campaign in the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Penguin Books
  • Publish Date: Mar 5th, 2019
  • Pages: 464
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.30in - 5.40in - 1.00in - 1.20lb
  • EAN: 9780143128991
  • Categories: WomenUnited States - 20th CenturyPolitical Process - Campaigns & Elections

More books to explore

Book Cover for: Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, Ari Berman
Book Cover for: Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, Tiya Miles
Book Cover for: Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, Samuel G. Freedman
Book Cover for: Woman: The American History of an Idea, Lillian Faderman
Book Cover for: Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, Debby Applegate
Book Cover for: King Richard: Nixon and Watergate--An American Tragedy, Michael Dobbs
Book Cover for: Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America, Gilda R. Daniels
Book Cover for: They Didn't See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties, Lisa Levenstein
Book Cover for: The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics, Joshua Green
Book Cover for: The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III, Peter Baker
Book Cover for: The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, Karen Tumulty
Book Cover for: Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul, A. J. Baime
Book Cover for: Ted Kennedy: A Life, John A. Farrell
Book Cover for: Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising, Joshua Green
Book Cover for: The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire, Treachery & Ruin in the City of Gold, Stephen G. Bloom

About the Author

Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist and writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper's, The New York Times, and The Christian Science Monitor, as well as in reports and documentaries for National Public Radio and Voice of America. A MacDowell Colony Fellow and Pushcart Prize Editor's Choice honoree, she is also the author of Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army in the Great War (Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press).

More books by Elaine Weiss

Book Cover for: Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement, Elaine Weiss
Book Cover for: Critical Conditions: Addressing Education Emergencies Through Integrated Student Supports, Elaine Weiss
Book Cover for: Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty, Elaine Weiss

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"Weiss renders the conflict so suspensefully that it is easy to see why Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television has already bought the rights to the book. The book grippingly recounts the twists and reversals that took place in the weeks leading up to the suffrage victory, but it is even more thrilling in its presentation of ideas--both those of the suffragists and those of the people who opposed them...The Woman's Hour animates the past so fully that its facts feel anything but fated."--Casey Cep, The New Yorker

"At the heart of democracy lies the ballot box, and Elaine Weiss's unforgettable book tells the story of the female leaders who--in the face of towering economic, racial, and political opposition--fought for and won American women's right to vote. Unfolding over six weeks in the summer of 1920, The Woman's Hour is both a page-turning drama and an inspiration for everyone, young and old, male and female, in these perilous times. So much could have gone wrong, but these American women would not take no for an answer: their triumph is our legacy to guard and emulate."--Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Stirring, definitive, and engrossing....Weiss brings a lucid, lively, journalistic tone to the story...The Woman's Hour is compulsory reading."--NPR.org

"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

"With a skill reminiscent of Robert Caro, [Weiss] turns the potentially dry stuff of legislative give-and-take into a drama of courage and cowardice."--The Wall Street Journal

"A genteel but bare-knuckled political thriller...the account reads like a reality show, impossible to predict...Weiss' narrative is energetic and buoyant even at the most critical moments."--Ms. Magazine

"A nonfiction political thriller...Weiss zeroes in on the final campaign of the suffrage movement."--Bustle.com

"Riveting... Weiss provides a multidimensional account of the political crusade... The result is a vivid work of American history." --The National Book Review

"Anyone interested in the history of our country's ongoing fight to put its founding values into practice--as well as those seeking the roots of current political fault lines--would be well-served by picking up Elaine Weiss's The Woman's Hour. By focusing in on the final battle in the war to win women the right to vote, told from the point of view of its foot soldiers, Weiss humanizes both the women working in favor of the amendment and those working against it, exposing all their convictions, tactics, and flaws. She never shies away from the complicating issue of race; the frequent conflict and occasional sabotage that occurred between women's suffrage activists and the leaders of the nascent civil rights movement make for some of the most fascinating material in the book."--Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Hidden Figures

"Even the most informed feminists will learn a thing or two."--HelloGiggles

"[A] lively history."--Newsday

"This timely exploration of the history of American gender politics reverberates during the present debate over female equality in all aspects of life and reminds us of how long and complex that struggle has been."--Knoxville News Sentinel

"An intriguing, timely read. Ripe for book club discussion."--South Coast Today

"[An] important tale...Weiss' reportage...enables her to add splashes of color [and] wonderful dimension."--USA Today

"A page-turner...the story here is told in all its ugliness."--New York Journal of Books

"This well-researched and well-documented history reveals how prosuffragists sometimes compromised racial equality to win white women's enfranchisement, and that, although the 19th Amendment was ratified, there exists to this day an ongoing battle to effect universal, unrestricted suffrage."--Library Journal

"Weiss does a wonderful job of laying out the background of the American women's suffrage movement....A lively slice of history filled with political drama, Weiss's book captures a watershed moment for American women."--Book Page

"Remarkably entertaining ... a timely examination of a shining moment in the ongoing fight to achieve a more perfect union."--Publishers Weekly, Starred and Boxed Review

"Imaginatively conceived and vividly written, The Woman's Hour gives us a stirring history of women's long journey to suffrage and to political influence. Making bold connection with race and class, Weiss's splendid book is as much needed today as it was in 1940 when Eleanor Roosevelt noted that men hate women with power. As every victory since the Civil War and Reconstruction faces the wrecker, The Woman's Hour is an inspiration in the continuing struggles for suffrage, and for race and gender justice, and for democracy.--Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of the New York Times bestseller Eleanor Roosevelt

Praise for Fruits of Victory

"Weiss's excellent work of cross-disciplinary scholarship offers readers a unique look at how WWI changed society."
--Booklist

"Weiss effectively chronicles the birth of the WLA movement and the dedicated women behind it. Recommended for both scholarly readers and interested history buffs."
--Library Journal