This book introduces readers to the advice-givers who have made their name, and sometimes their fortune, by telling Americans what to do. Some of their advice has been questionable, and much has been debunked over time, but for all that, Americans have always loved advice, as long as it is anonymous, and as long as it is clear we are asking for a friend rather than for ourselves. [From publisher's description]

Offers examples of real-life matriarchs who gave everything to protect their children and causes, from Sojourner Truth's legal campaign against slavery to Irena Sender's advocacy on behalf of young Holocaust victims.

"William D. Cohan brings to life on the page four friends of his who died young. All four attended Andover, the most elite boarding school in America. Jack Berman, the child of impoverished Holocaust survivors, uses his unlikely Andover pedigree to achieve the American dream, only to be cut down in an unimaginable act of violence. Will Daniel, Harry Truman's grandson and the son of the managing editor of The New York Times, does everything possible...

"Former presidents have an unusual place in American Life. King George III believed that George Washington's departure after two terms made him "the greatest character of the age." But Alexander Hamilton worried former presidents might "[wander] among the people like ghosts." They were both right. Life After Power tells the stories of seven former presidents, from the founding to today. Each changed history. Each offered lessons about how to...

"The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers. But the little-known fact is that female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation--they've just been erased from the story. Until now. Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they've often been hidden in plain sight, their...

A chronologically arranged collection of profiles of 100 notable American women, ranging from Virginia Dare to Oprah Winfrey.

"From the East End of London to the eastern seaboard of the United States, from Spitalfields to Scottish castles, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty-first. As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Excluded from the...

At the pinnacle of the Gilded Age, a boycott of Pullman sleeping cars by hundreds of thousands of railroad employees brought commerce to a standstill across much of the country. Famine threatened, riots broke out along rail lines. Soon the U. S. Army was on the march and gunfire rang from the streets of major cities. This epochal tale offers fascinating portraits of 2 iconic characters of the age: George Pullman, who amassed a fortune by making...

"Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth as she explores the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African American men the right to vote but not white and African American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered...