Kay Mills

Comments about From Pocahontas to Power Suits:

“Mills’s book...is full of women, both victims and victors, who took chances for the causes in which they believed. So many are unjustly forgotten: among them, Angelina Weld Grimke, a South Carolina woman who with her sister Sarah was a supporter of freeing slaves; Mabel Staupers, a graduate of Freeman’s Hospital School of Nursing in Washington and a founder of the National Council of Negro Women, who tried to integrate military nursing services; and Frances Perkins, who headed the cabinet committee that initiated the Social Security Act and federal unemployment insurance.”
“`When I was in school and we studied history, it was wars, tariffs and presidents--so women weren’t in the textbooks,’ Ms. Mills says. `Now, we’re starting to see a change in the way history is written. We’re getting more social history, more about the way people actually lived. And so you’re starting to get more women’s history. What I’ve tried to do in my book is to show young women, in particular, that there has been a lot of struggle. A lot of people stuck their necks out so that we could have the kind of situation we live in today. Yes, there are still some battles that have to be fought. But when you look at what women in the 18th and 19th centuries had to do, you see how far we’ve come.'”
“One interviewer called Kay Mills’ new book on women’s history `mother-friendly.’ Mills loves that description...She says it means it’s the kind of book you can read even when you have a lot of interruptions. This new little paperback provides a quick but authoritative introduction to women’s history, giving no more than a page or two to each significant historical figure. Organized in question-and-answer form, it’s easy to read in spurts.”
“A lively, engaging guide to the whys and wherefores of women’s too-often hidden role in American history, culture, and politics”
“Here are American women, known and unknown, heroes sung and unsung. This is the book for all who have long wanted to know this history, and for the twenty- and thirtysomethings who don’t know how to learn about it.”
“Fun and engaging...Here is a book for everyone--even those who think they don’t like history. After reading Kay Mills’s book, they’ll never say that again.”