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 Gg Every sentence of this book is a debt to other historians. With each paragraph come my thanks and my apologies for any misunderstandings and misuses I have made of the research and writing of my colleagues. My debt to those with whom I have worked side by side for some thirty years in the field of women’s and gender history is yet deeper. This book was conceived in the classrooms of the University of California, Berkeley, where I co-taught first with the anthropologist Aihwa Ong and then with European historians Thomas Laqueur and Carla Hesse. They made me see the history of women in the United States with new clarity as well as complexity. The American Studies reading group at Berkeley gave me the courage to move forward on what seemed like a foolhardy project; Paul Groth, Richard Hutson, Larry Levine, Margaretta Lovell, Kathy Moran, Louise Mozingo, Carolyn Porter, Chris Rosen, and Dell Upton offered critical interdisciplinary perspectives and sharp readings of several chapters. My graduate students at Berkeley offered research assistance as well as inspiration all along the way; most recently I have especially to thank Amanda Littauer and Karen McNeill. The History Department of Johns Hopkins provided the bracingly supportive environment in which the book was completed. ‘‘The Seminar’’ invigorated its author on successive Mondays for the last three years, while teaching along side Toby Ditz, Tobie Meyer-Fong, and Judy Walkowitz broadened and enriched my understanding of gender history.Without the research assistance from Zhao Ma, computer help from Clayton Haywood, and the historical and practical wisdom of Katherine Hijar, the manuscript would never have made it to press. The early draft of the manuscript benefited immensely from tolerant and toughly sympathetic readings by Kathleen Brown, Nancy Cott, Linda Gordon , Linda Kerber, and Jan Lewis. Jane Dailey, James Brooks, and David Henkin offered invaluable readings of individual chapters. The anonymous readers for the University of North Carolina Press, two of whom turned out to be Nancy Hewitt and Stephanie McCurry, offered strategic editorial advice, as well as their expertise. At  Press, Kate Torrey pushed me, again and again, to get it better, and she was always right. These scholars kept me from sundry mistakes and misconceptions: I only wish I could correct them all and respond more adeptly to their criticism. I have my colleagues and coworkers to thank for the excitement that still surrounds the field of women’s history. Closer to home, my daughter Anne Busacca-Ryan and the trail of wonderful young friends who seem always to follow her are to be credited with infusing my sense of the present and future of gender with such hopefulness. I have Robert Roper to thank for the pleasures that begin and end each of our writing days.The book is dedicated to my students and colleagues too numerous to name. But I remember you vividly: the alert faces in the front of the lecture hall, tough questions from the back rows, brilliant exegesis in seminars, incisive commentaries at scholarly conferences , the intense satisfaction of working together (especially on the journal Feminist Studies), and the raucous celebrations that followed our successful struggles to put women, sex, and gender on the curriculum—from the State University of New York, Binghamton, to the University of California at Santa Barbara, Irvine, and Berkeley. It has been a pleasure and a privilege. I cannot thank you enough.  G  ...

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