"All human beings are practicing historians," writes Gerda Lerner. "We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." It is as important as breathing, too. History shapes our self-definition and our relationship to community; it locates us in time and place and helps to give meaning to our lives. History can be the vital thread that holds a nation together, as demonstrated most strikingly in the case of Jewish history. Conversely, for women, who have lived in a world ...

Lauded for its contribution to the theory and conceptualization of the field of women’s history and for its sensitivity to the differences of class, ethnicity, race, and culture among women, The Majority Finds Its Past became a classic volume in women’s history following its publication in 1979. This edition includes a foreword by Linda K. Kerber, introducing a new generation of readers to Gerda Lerner’s considerable body of work and highlighting the importance of the essays in th...

A landmark work of women’s history originally published in 1967, Gerda Lerner’s best-selling biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimké explores the lives and ideas of the only southern women to become antislavery agents in the North and pioneers for women’s rights. This revised and expanded edition includes two new primary documents and an additional essay by Lerner. In a revised introduction Lerner reinterprets her own work nearly forty years later and gives new recognition to the major sign...

This stimulating collection of essays in an autobiographical framework spans the period from 1963 to the present. It encompasses Gerda Lerner’s theoretical writing and her organizational work in transforming the history profession and in establishing Women’s History as a mainstream field.Six of the twelve essays are new, written especially for this volume; the others have previously appeared in small journals or were originally presented as talks, and have been revised for this boo...

A major new work by a leading historian and pioneer in women's studies, The Creation of Patriarchy is a radical reconceptualization of Western civilization that makes gender central to its analysis. Gerda Lerner argues that male dominance over women is not "natural" or biological, but the product of an historical development begun in the second millennium BC in the Ancient Near East. As patriarchy as a system of organizing society was established historically, she contends, it can...

This stimulating collection of essays in an autobiographical framework encompasses Gerda Lerner's theoretical writing and her organizational work in transforming the history profession and in establishing Women's History as a mainstream field.Six of the 12 essays are new, written especially for this volume; the others have previously appeared in small journals or were originally presented as talks, and have been revised for this audiobook. Several essays discuss feminist teaching a...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how—and why—he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America.“Meacham has given us the Lincoln for our time.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize • Longlisted for the Biographers International Plutarch Award • O...

"Traces the history of abolition from the 1600s to the 1860s . . . a valuable addition to our understanding of the role of race and racism in America."— Florida CourierReceived historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radic...

**Now an Apple TV+ documentary, Lincoln's Dilemma, airing February 18, 2022.One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year | A Washington Post Notable Book | A Christian Science Monitor and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Abraham Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award"A marvelous cultural biography that captures Lincoln in all his historical fullness. . . . usi...

George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the historical mood of the 1830's. When the Tea Party became a leading symbol of the Revolutionary ear fifty years after the actual event, this 'common man' in his nineties was 'discovered' and celebrated in Boston as a national hero. Young pieces together this extraordinary tale...

A testament to the power of the human spirit under conditions of extreme oppression, this landmark history of slavery in the South challenged conventional views by illuminating the many forms of resistance to dehumanization that developed in slave society.Displaying keen insight into the minds of both enslaved persons and slaveholders, historian Eugene Genovese investigates the ways that enslaved persons forced their owners to acknowledge their humanity through cul...

Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill.The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion, individual and organized, which had been growing for more than a generation before the witch trials. Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it.From rich and varied source...