Her Story

Women making history are the subject of some terrific new fiction and nonfiction reads! Follow their voyages, accomplishments and personal journeys—these books offer a new perspective on history and the women who braved new challenges. 

Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-making Race Around the World   by Matthew Goodman. 

Nellie Bly took risks to become an early investigative journalist in a career open to few women. In 1889, her newspaper The World sent her to circle the globe in 75 days—to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero. The Cosmopolitan magazine sent Elizabeth Bisland in the opposite direction, and the two young female journalists, each traveling unaccompanied, raced to arrive back to New York City. Fascinating historical details take you to a time when telegrams, transcontinental railroad, and ever faster steamship travel were making the world a much smaller place.

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II   By Denise Kiernan

Lured by job opportunities, higher pay, and handsome young coworkers, thousands of talented women—engineers, statisticians, secretaries and janitors—were recruited to work at a Manhattan Project city in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  The city didn’t appear on any map, workers knew only what was needed to complete their small task, and asking questions resulted in immediate job loss and eviction. As the atomic era begins, the book focuses on the stories of nine women, their lives at Oak Ridge, their commitment to the war effort, and their startling revelation of how their work contributed to ending WWII.

The Aviator’s Wife

by Melanie Benjamin

They were the nation’s first celebrity couple, but Anne Morrow Lindbergh is often overshadowed by her husband’s fame. An accomplished author, Anne Morrow was also the first American woman to earn a glider pilot license, an experienced navigator and one of the first licensed radio operators. As her husband’s copilot, she explored and charted transatlantic routes for the burgeoning airline industry.  In this historical novel, Anne Morrow recounts the more personal story of her life with Charles Lindbergh.

Mom & Me & Mom   

by Maya Angelou

Poignant, poetic, powerful—Maya Angelou tells the story of her relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter Johnson. The relationship is complicated, reconciliation difficult, and her mother’s pride, love and support has shaped the author’s life and her accomplishments. As Maya Angelou describes in her prologue, “This book has been written to examine some of the ways love heals and helps a person climb impossible heights and rise from immeasurable depths.”

What books featuring women and history are you enjoying?