Abstracts

Carol K. Bleser and Lesley J. Gordon, eds. Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xxiii + 292 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-19-511509-0 (cl).

Each of the twelve essays in this collection studies the marriage of Civil War commanders—six from the Confederacy and six from the Union—during the war years and beyond. The collection shows the impact of the war on family life and shows that these famous couples faced the same "loneliness, isolation, frustration, and anxiety" as the common soldiers and their wives. Ranging from happy marriages to the "downright dysfunctional," the lives of these couples show that there were many similarities between the couples of the North and the South. Class and race had a greater influence on wartime experiences than regional differences. This collection is filled with unique and interesting examples, which suggest that assumptions about nineteenth-century life are not always accurate. The traditional domestic sphere was not so clearly defined for many of these women who struggled against the confines of domestic life to the detriment of marital harmony. Finally, this volume's greatest contribution is that it bridges the gap between women's history and military history.——Kelly Obernuefemann

Eve Golden. Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000. ix + 243 pp. ISBN 0-8131-2153-1 (cl).

Eve Golden's biography of turn-of-the-century musical comedy star Anna Held illuminates a long overlooked figure of Broadway. Held, a Jewish woman born in Poland, orphaned in her mid-teens, and exiled to Paris, London, and finally America, went on to become an internationally renowned actress. Golden traces how Held actively promoted her shows, suggested elaborate costumes, and captivated audiences through skill, beauty, humor, and entrepreneurship. In doing so, she contributed significantly to the rise of legendary theater producer Florenz Ziegfeld, with whom she had a long marriage. Held brought La Belle Époque to New York, but she would take it back to the front lines of World War I France, where she brought entertainment and much needed medical supplies to soldiers. An accessible, clever, well-written biography, it will be of interest to students of women's theatre, American Jewish history, and lay readers alike.——Milla Rosenberg

Ann D. Gordon, ed. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Volume II: Against an Aristocracy of Sex, 1866 to 1873. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. xlii + 682 pp. ISBN 0-8135-2318-4 (cl).

This volume, the second of a six-volume series, compiles speeches, letters, and diary entries of two remarkable political activists. With her team of assistants, Gordon documents the early years of Reconstruction, when Stanton and Anthony took the universal suffrage movement nationwide. While the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment offered hope for their aims, a series of refusals by polling places, state legislatures, and Congress blocked the enfranchisement of women. Letters highlight an impressive, yet sometimes critical network of allies and friends, including Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, and Victoria Woodhull. The text highlights a close relationship between Anthony and Stanton—they lived together in the Stantons' NYC home, co-edited the weekly Revolution, and traveled to California together in 1871. Anthony's letters to Stanton are signed "affectionately," but whether Stanton returned those feelings is not clear. Useful to scholars interested in the links between abolitionism and feminism as well as regional historians, this carefully annotated, beautifully illustrated book is a tremendous contribution to U.S. history.——Milla Rosenberg

June Hannam and Karen Hunt. Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s. London: Routledge, 2002. viii + 232 pp. ISBN 0-415-26639-4 (pb).

Challenging traditional histories of both suffrage and labor, Hannam and Hunt explore the contested identities of socialist women in Britain from the 1880s into the interwar era. The authors examine how socialist women's loyalties to gender, class, and party were configured and demonstrate that for many of these women these loyalties changed over...