Preface Introduction BIOGRAPHIES A-Z Classified List of Biographies
Barbara Sicherman is Kenan Professor of American Institutions and Values, Trinity College, and coeditor of Notable American Women: The Modern Period.
Anyone who has tried to look up any but the most famous women in the Dictionary of American Biography or Who Was Who knows the inestimable value of the first three volumes of Notable American Women published in 1971...This new volume, The Modern Period, represents 442 women who died between 1951 and 1975, from Eleanor Roosevelt, Josephine Baker and Hannah Arendt to Perle Mesta, ZaSu Pitts and Polly Adler--occupation, 'Madam'...A superb biographical dictionary. -- Jean Strouse Newsweek A different sort of reference book, the latest volume in a landmark series of biographical dictionaries funded by Radcliffe College and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Its entries are detailed and scholarly, yet immensely readable. Picking it up I found myself casually browsing from Jennie Grossinger to Zora Neale Hurston to Julia Morgan--and looked up to discover that a whole hour had passed. -- Alida Becker Philadelphia Inquirer This book supplements three earlier volumes from Radcliffe which carried us from colonial days to 1950. For inclusion here, a notable woman had to die between 1951 and 1975--a quarter century of obituaries...Given the fact that a reference book must squeeze large numbers of facts into little allotments of space, this book is surprisingly well written. It is not easy to proceed with a scholarly straight face after the heading, 'Adler, Polly, April 16 1900?- June 9, 1962. Madam.' Birth and death certificates are used when they are available and standard references are unobtrusively corrected. Yet some writers manage to be witty under all the restraints and some are positively moving--e.g. Mary McGrory on Doris Fleeson, Anne Douglas on Dorothy Parker or Sally Fitzgerald on Flannery O'Connor. -- Garry Wills New York Times Book Review One of the most easily read and factually accurate references available. Ms. Magazine There are role models here for generations of American women yet to come and lessons to be learned from this extraordinary piece of research, not only about America's past but about its future. Boston Globe
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