French lessons, by Ellen Sussman

In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to read this short novel about love in its many forms. French lessons is about three French tutors and their respective students who have signed up for private lessons in Paris. Nico spends the day tutoring Josie, a French teacher who has recently lost her married lover in a plane crash. Josie is visiting Paris alone, grieving in a way that she cannot do at home, and her encounter with Nico helps her along on the way to recovery from her paralyzing grief. Philippe is teaching beginning French to Riley who is in Paris with her two small children and husband, Victor. Vic has been distant lately, staying out late and leaving early in the morning, and Riley is feeling more and more isolated and finding no comfort in the ex-pat groups that she belongs to. She spends the day with Philippe, wandering around Paris on a tour that eventually leads to an afternoon of passion at his apartment. Finally, Jeremy passes his last day with his tutor, Chantal, fantasizing about kissing her. He's feeling some dissatisfaction with his marriage to Dana, an actress working on a film in Paris. All three of the tutors are single and looking for love, and all three of the students are experiencing some kind of crisis: grief, abandonment, or dissatisfaction. The book is framed by two short chapters that have the tutors meeting up before and after their day, and the bulk of the book is one chapter devoted to each relationship. The stories don't have pat endings, but each pair of tutor and student had learned something about themselves and what they want, and moved themselves a little bit further along to getting it.
 

The dig, by John Preston

 

I really enjoyed this novel based on the true story of the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial in Sutton Hoo, England. As war approached Europe in 1939, Basil Brown was hired by a landowner, Edith Pretty, to excavate the mounds on her property, long assumed to be ancient burial sites. He's unsuccessful with the first few mounds, but strikes it rich on the largest mound in the field, unearthing what appears to be a ship burial. The wood used to build the ship was long decomposed, but left its shape in the sand of the mound along with all of the metal rivets used to build it and the items that were buried with it. Before long, Brown is pushed aside by men from the British Museum who take over the excavation and relegate Brown to a subordinate role. This novel brings the characters to life, including Mrs. Pretty, widowed and with a small son, Robert, as well as the cast of archeologists who descend on the dig such as Stuart Piggotty, a college professor and archeologist and his wife, also an archeologist but also his former student. The book shows the excitement of such a find, which changed the historical narrative about England after the end of Roman rule. Previously thought to be an uncivilized and barbaric time, the find made clear that there was a sophisticated trade network in existence in the 6th-7th centuries. Based on the amount of gold and silver artifacts found in the burial chamber, it's likely that the ship burial was for a king, possibly King Raedwald, King of the East Angles. The 2021 Netflix film based on this book and starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan hews closely to the book with a little added drama and romance to spice it up.

The murder on the links, by Agatha Christie

 

This is Agatha Christie's third mystery and her second one featuring Hercule Poirot. Although I read a lot of Christie as a teenager, this was not one that I'd read. I really enjoyed this mystery in which Poirot is asked to go to France to consult with a man about some concerns he has regarding an old secret. Poirot takes his friend Colonel Hastings with him, but when they arrive, they find that the man has been killed that morning and his body found in a shallow grave on a golf course next to his home. I loved the writing and the twists and turns of the plot. As usual, it keeps you guessing all the way to the end when Poirot reveals the killer.

The writing of the gods: the race to decode the Rosetta stone, by Edward Dolnick

 

I really enjoyed this fascinating and well-researched history of the finding and decoding of the Rosetta stone. After several men failed to make headway, two scholars took on the project, one English and one French. Thomas Young made an initial discovery about decoding personal names, but stalled after that. Frenchman Jean-François Champolllion realized that the hieroglyphs were used to represent sounds in all or most words, not just in names that needed to be spelled out, such as foreign names liked Ptolemy. Author Edward Dolnick provides a thorough historical background to the discovery, which was made during Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Egypt in 1798. He also seems to delight in taking the reader on tangents about other languages and explorers, making this an entertaining read. Written for a lay audience, Dolnick does a good job of explaining technical issues related to the decoding of the hieroglyphs, providing excellent corollary examples of the concepts in English. There are illustrations throughout the book, including examples of hieroglyphs and black and white photographs, and there are eight pages of colored plates as well. There are lengthy notes and bibliography sections and an index. I recommend this book and look forward to reading other works by him.

Cinema love, by Jiaming Tang

 

I liked this book about a group of Chinese immigrants who struggle with life and love in New York's Chinatown. The story actually spans decades, starting in China where many of the characters cross paths in the Worker's Cinema, a run-down movie theater that's used by the town's gay men, most of them married, to meet up with each other. Over the next decade, many of these characters immigrate to New York where they live in extreme poverty. One of the things I was struck by is the overall unhappiness of all of the characters in the book. The women are in loveless marriages, and the men are struggling to survive while also secretly seeking out male companionship. No one communicates effectively with each other, and resentments and regrets linger for decades. One of the characters feels responsible for the closure of the cinema that resulted in her husband's death; it's only late in the book that she learns that the cinema would have closed anyway and she carried that guilt all her life for nothing. None of these characters are very likable, and they all make bad decisions, which would usually make me dislike the book, but I found this one to be very compelling.

The secret adversary, by Agatha Christie

 

I really enjoyed the second novel of Agatha Christie's. It's the first of five books starring the characters Tommy and Tuppence. In this one, Tommy and Tuppence meet after the war, and neither has had luck finding employment. They decide to team up as the "Young Adventurers" and take on jobs for hire. Tuppence is offered a job, but when her potential employer disappears, she and Tommy decide to track him down, and get embroiled in a much larger conspiracy that involves people at the highest level of government. It's a fun read that brings Tommy and Tuppence together not just as friends, but also romantically.

The Friday afternoon club: a family memoir, by Griffin Dunne

 

I enjoyed this celebrity memoir written by actor, director, and producer Griffin Dunne. It brought to life the crazy life of his parents and extended family in the 1960s and 1970s as they lived and worked in Hollywood. He tells his own life story without flinching from his father's closeted identity, his mother's illness, his brother's mental illness, his sister's murder, and disputes with his extended family, specifically John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. Griffin Dunne grew up in a wealthy and entitled family, attended private schools (until he was expelled), then moved to New York City to try to make it as a stage actor. He had some success with acting and producing films, but discusses many of the missed opportunities that he had as well. He's not shy about sharing the names of many of the actors who attended parties as his parents' home, sharing seedy details about drunkenness along with heavy cocaine and LSD use. At one point he reports that Susan Sarandon gave him a sheet of acid from Timothy Leary's personal stash for his 28th birthday party. He also writes quite a bit about his life-long friendship with Carrie Fisher; they met at teenagers but stayed friends until her death in 2016. Most of the action in this book takes place in the 1960s through the 1980s, with a large portion covering his sister Dominique's 1983 murder trial.

Edmund: in search of England's lost king, by Francis Young

This is a good introduction to Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia until his death in 869. Edmund was killed by the Danes, reportedly tied to a tree, shot with many arrows, then beheaded. His head was separated from his body and thrown into the woods, where it was found later, by some accounts guarded by a wolf, reunited with his body to which it became re-attached. His body was said to be incorruptible (in that it did not decompose), one of the many miracles attributed to him. Over the following decades and centuries, his body was moved several times before being housed in a shrine in Bury St. Edmund. It was later lost, possibly during the dissolution of monasteries that Henry VIII set in progress. This was a well-written account that covers the historical period leading up to Edmund's death, the various reports of the death itself, and the growth of a cult around Edmund that led to a portrayal of him as the King of all England, even though he was actually only one of many kings that controlled smaller territories at that time.. The last chapter addresses the location of Edmund's body with the author putting forward a plausible theory that it is interred in the monk's cemetery next to the Abbey ruins at Bury St. Edmund, under what is now a tennis court.
 

Deep & wild: on mountains, opossums & finding your way in West Virginia, by Laura Jackson

 

I enjoyed this collection of personal essays about West Virginia. Author Laura Jackson is a West Virginia native and writes lovingly about her home state. She covers many topics, but primarily the flora, fauna, and geography of the state. Chapters address copperhead snakes, opossums, dogs, the red spruce, country roads, topography, and much more. With an easy prose, Jackson gives the reader a good understanding of what makes West Virginia special, but without denying or overstating its problems.

The enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim

I really enjoyed this 1922 novel about four women who travel to Italy, renting an old castle for a month. All of the women are unhappy for different reasons, but they find that their month away has given them the time and space to heal and face their respective concerns. The writing reminds me of E.M. Forster's classics Howards End, and A room with a view with their witty dialogue and comical situations, but also real-life sorrows and anxieties. This is a scholarly edition with a lengthy introduction, bibliography, chronology of von Arnim, and explanatory notes, which were very helpful.
 

Dear Evan Hansen, book by Steven Levenson; music and lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul

 

Dear Evan Hansen is a musical that will be coming to Eisenhower Auditorium in April, so I thought I'd read the play before going to see it. I really enjoyed this sad, but heartwarming, play about a boy who gets drawn into a long-term web of deception following the death of a school mate. It shows how one lie leads to another, until it's almost impossible to extricate oneself without blowing everything up. I won't give away any of the plot lines here, but will just say that this is a worthwhile read.

Devil is fine, by John Vercher

 

Devil is fine tells the story of a biracial man who has just lost his teenage son. He inherits a plot of land that was meant for his son upon reaching age 18, but since his son died before then, he inherits it instead. Intending to sell the land and arranging routine inspections prior to the sale, he finds that the land is a former plantation and has the skeletons of enslaved people as well as the plantation owners on it. These developments wreak havoc with the narrator's mental stability, and an element of magical realism enters the story. The narrator has regular conversations with his dead son, he is transported into the past where he inhabits the persona of the plantation owner as he abuses his slaves, and other times he experiences hallucinations that he is turning into a jellyfish. In the meantime, he has a high level of difficulty getting along with everyone else in his life, including his son's mother, his co-worker, and new people he meets along the way. I found his conversations with others to be so filled with hostility that it was difficult to imagine anyone behaving that way, even someone grieving the way he is. Eventually, after what seems like a series of psychotic breaks, he has an epiphany that allows him to move forward.

An unfinished love story: a personal history of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

 

This is a wonderful look at not only the relationship between Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, but also an in-depth memoir about both of their experiences working in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s. This was my Albany book club's December pick, but none of us finished in time, so it's carried over to January. I thought it would be mostly about their personal relationship, but there is a lot of substantive history here. It's fascinating to read about their experiences, bolstered by the artifacts and documents that they explore as they root through Dick Goodwin's hundreds of boxes of archives. It was also interesting to see how their opinions about John and Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson evolved as they reviewed the events of the 1960s from the vantage point of 50 years in the future. I loved the writing and couldn't put the book down.

The Brooklyn follies, by Paul Auster

I really enjoyed this novel by Paul Auster, one of my favorite authors. The Brooklyn follies tells the story of a recently retired, divorced man (Nathan) who relocates to Brooklyn from his former suburban home. His comfortable routine of writing, visiting a favority bookstore, eating in a local diner, is upended when he realizes that his nephew (Tom) is working in the bookstore that he regularly frequents. Both of their lives are further upended when Tom's niece (and Nathan's great-niece), Lucy, shows up on their doorstep. Adventures ensue as they try to find out what happened to Lucy's mother, get involved in a forgery scam, travel to Vermont for a getaway, and meet new friends that will change their lives forever. This is a well-written, heartwarming, and amusing story about making a new life with the people around us.
 

The Plantagenets: the kings that made Britain, by Derek Wilson

 

This is a good introduction to the Plantagenet dynasty in Britain. It devotes a chapter to almost all of the kings from Henry II through Henry V, one chapter on the War of the Roses, and then a final chapter on Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III. It includes helpful family trees of the ancestors of Henry II, the Plantagenet kings, and the Houses of Lancaster and York. My one beef is that the family trees include the individuals' lifespan dates, but I would also like to see their dates of rule. Most kings' portraits are included in their respective chapters, and there is one map of England and its territorial possessions under Henry II. The book covers more than a dozen reigns and 300+ years of history in fewer than 300 pages, so it is a cursory look at this period.

The mysterious affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie

 

I read what I thought was a lot of Agatha Christie mysteries when I was a teenager, probably a few dozen, but that's only a fraction of her 66 novels and 14 short story collections published between 1921 and 1976, and I haven't read any of her non-fiction, poetry, or plays. I recently decided to delve back into her works, taking a chronological approach, so I began with this one, her first book and her first mystery featuring Poirot. My past reading of Christie was scattershot: basically as I came across her books in used or new book stores or the library. Reading them out of order didn't hamper me, but I thought it would be fun to read them as she created them this time. I thoroughly enjoyed this one as it introduced Poirot for the first time as a Belgian refugee from the Nazis in WWII and his friend Hastings, a wounded veteran from the same conflict. I like the way Poirot roots around for the solution to every puzzle, sometimes being led astray but always finding his way back to the truth, often inspired by a stray comment from Hastings. And Hastings always takes the wrong lesson from every clue, but his goodness of heart makes him unable to be suspicious of a friend. Very enjoyable!

How to connect, by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

This is the second book in a series of "how to" books by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh that I've read; other books in the series include How to Eat, How to Fight, How to Love, How to Relax, How to See, How to Sit, How to Focus, and How to Work. How to Connect is a thoughtful, yet brief, book (124 pages) that provides insight into how you might make more meaningful connections with others through mindfulness, breathing exercises, meditation, and other techniques.

Headshot, by Rita Bullwinkel

I was prepared to dislike Headshot because I really don't like boxing as a sport, but I was surprised by how engaging this book was. It's about a boxing tournament for teenage girls that takes place in Reno, with many of the girls traveling long distances to participate along with their coaches and family. Eight girls are boxing, and each chapter chronicles the interior lives of each pair as they advance through the brackets. I think the author did a masterful job of presenting each girl's personality and motivation as they go through the eight rounds of each bout. The writing is very good and presents each girl's personality and background without making it about race or diversity. I also found it interesting that the focus is on the girls without bringing in romance or boyfriends back home. There are men in the book, but they're in the background as coaches and judges. This is a short book (only 207 pages), but definitely worth a read.
 

Much ado about nothing, by William Shakespeare

 

I really enjoyed this play about Beatrice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio. I read it in anticipation of seeing the play performed at Penn State's Centre Stage, and I'm glad I read it first because I understood the performance much better than if I'd gone in cold.

Long after we are gone, by Terah Shelton Harris

In this family drama, author Terah Shelton Harris reveals the problems inherent in "heir property," which is land that has been inherited, but without a title or formal transfer of ownership. This makes the land vulnerable to predatory investors who are often able to purchase the land below market value from one heir, undercutting the property rights of the other heirs. In Long after we are gone, the Solomon family comes together after their father dies. Each member of the family, including two brothers, two sisters, and an uncle, have serious problems. One has an eating disorder, one has an anger management issue that has landed him in jail twice, one is a closeted gay man, and one has embezzled money from her law firm and is being sexually blackmailed by a colleague. The uncle is a violent criminal who has sold part of the property without their knowledge and who wants to sell the rest. The plot takes us through all of them coming to terms with secrets they've held for years, ultimately learning the value of openness and communication. I had a hard time getting into the book; each character is so flawed that they are not very likable, and it was a struggle to get to the half-way point. Once there, though, I was able to root for them and was happy to see how they ultimately come together with honesty and love.
 

Trust her, by Flynn Berry

 

I didn't realize when I began Trust Her that it is a sequel to Northern Spy, which I haven't read yet. I would have preferred to read them in order, but it's not necessary to understand the book. It begins with the narrator, Tessa, being kidnapped. It becomes apparent that she has been tracked down by members of the IRA three years after Tessa and her sister, Marian, changed their identities and moved to the Republic of Ireland from Belfast, where Marian was first a member of the IRA, then later an informer for MI5. The IRA wants Tessa (who also served as an informer, although she was never a member of the IRA) to contact her former MI5 handler in an effort to turn him. Both Tessa and Marian have young children, which makes them vulnerable to blackmail and threats of violence. Tessa follows their instructions and this begins a series of meetings and actions that result in high anxiety for Tessa. When her sister fails to return from a hike, Tessa contacts the police and this begins to unravel everything. As a thriller, this is very well written and suspenseful, without resorting to the over-the-top action and violence of many books in this genre. It's gripping, and leaves the reader guessing about how it will turn out until the very end. This book was eye opening to me; after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, violence in Northern Ireland seemed to fall out of the news here, and I didn't realize that there are still factions of the IRA in existence, fomenting violence in protest against the UK. This book reveals not only the fact of its existence, but also highlights the exhaustion of living with the threat of violence.

Traitor's gate, by Jeffrey Archer

 

This is a bit of escapist fiction featuring a group of Scotland Yard officers who are tasked with protecting the crown jewels when they're being transported from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace when the Queen needed them for affairs of state as well as a criminal who wants to get revenge for his capture and imprisonment for an earlier crime. There's a lot of action and many twists and turns to this completely implausible tale, but it was fun.

Two tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam, by S.Y. Agnon; translated from the Hebrew by Walter Lever

 

These are two novellas written by celebrated Hebrew novelist S.Y. Agnon, who was the recipient of the Nobel prize in Literature in 1966. Betrothed is about Jacob Rechnitz, a botanist who immigrates to Palestine. Unable to find work in his field, he takes a position teaching Latin and German, in which he does very well. He lives a comfortable existence, and is friendly with a group of six young women with whom he walks and talks regularly. One day he learns that his benefactor is visiting; Herr Ehrlich was a neighbor to Jacob during his youth, and helped fund his education. Ehrlich's daughter Susan accompanies her father on the visit to Jacob, and reminds him of their childhood promise to marry. Jacob promises to keep his pledge, but Susan becomes sick with an illness she picked up on her travels. Jacob goes for a walk with his six women friends, and they propose a race with the winner being the one who would marry Jacob. As they race across the sand, they are overtaken by Susan, who wins the race. Edo and Enam tells an even stranger tale. The narrator visits his friends, Gerhard Greifenbach and his wife Gerda, who are planning a trip abroad. They've taken in a lodger, Dr. Ginath, but he's not often there. They're concerned about their house being broken into while they're gone, so they leave their keys with the narrator who promises to visit occasionally and make sure everything's OK. The narrator's family goes to visit relatives out of town, so he decides to spend a night or two at the Greifenbach's. While there, he's visited by his friend Gabriel Gamzu, a rare book and manuscript dealer. Gamzu tells the narrator about his wife, Gemulah, who is sickly and unless Gamzu uses charms to prevent it, sleepwalks at night. He reports that he lost the charms he uses, and she has disappeared. The next night Gamzu shows up again and tells the narrator that his wife has returned. Even though he doesn't have the charms, he's using another trick to keep her from leaving the bed while sleepwalking: leaving a wet cloth on the floor next to the bed. Apparently, this is meant to wake her up if she gets out of bed. While talking, they overhear something in the next room and find Gemulah talking to Dr. Ginath, whom they didn't realize was there. Ginath sends Gemulah home with Gamzu. A month later, the narrator sees a death notice, and learns that Ginath and Gemulah have died; Ginath saw Gemulah on a roof, and trying to save her, they both fell to their deaths. The story ends with the funeral and the return of the Greifenbach's.

I found both stories interesting, but strange. There are a lot of digressions from the main narratives, and some strange, magical sequences. There's no sense of history in these stories, just a feeling of provincial life in what seems like a backwater locale. I liked reading Gamzu's stories about hunting down books and manuscripts; in many cases, he's buying books from wealthy people who are unloading their families' religious texts. And why did all the names in Edo and Enam begin with a G?

You're doing great! ... and other reasons to stay alive, by Tom Papa

I'm a big fan of Tom Papa's standup, which led me to this book of essays. Papa is very funny, and the essays included here cover some of the same material from his stand up routines, but there's a lot of new material in here as well. The essays are just 4-5 pages each, and I read most of them while on the stationary bike at the Y. They were highly diverting and entertaining and made the time fly by.
 

My year of rest and relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh

I have to admit that I approached this book with some skepticism since I disliked her earlier book, Eileen. I'm sorry to say that I didn't like this book any more than that one. My year of rest and relaxation is the story of a mid-20s woman who has lost both of her parents and is living on her inheritance, having squandered her job working at an art gallery. Describing herself (over and over) as model thin and pretty, she has decided to sleep as much as possible for a year. She finds a cartoonishly-unethical psychiatrist who prescribes what seems like dozens of mind-altering pills which she mixes and matches for months. She treats her "friend" Reva terribly, and continues to stalk her former boyfriend. She has contempt for everything and everyone. Ultimately, none of the characters in this book are relatable or likeable. While the writing is good, and the main character's backstory is sad, the events of the novel itself are ludicrous, ultimately leading up to the events of September 11, 2001, which seems out of place in this narrative.

The panic zone, by Rick Mofina

 

This is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that follows a young woman who's lost her husband and son in a car crash (although she swears she saw someone take her son), an investigative reporter (Jack Gannon), and an international conspiracy involving a deadly manufactured pathogen. This is the 2nd in the Jack Gannon series; it's fast-paced and entertaining.

Maybe you should talk to someone, by Lori Gottlieb

 

This was a really interesting book in which the author Lori Gottlieb, a therapist, writes about her own need for therapy when she experienced a loss. Gottlieb interweaves her own story with the experiences of a half dozen or so of her patients. Often she demonstrates that what they're experiencing is something that she also encounters in her own therapy sessions, and it's interesting to see her recognize and deal with those situations herself. It's really well written and a fast read. It also serves to take the mystery out of what therapy entails, and I would guess that a lot of people would consider therapy for themself after they read the book.

The thread collectors, by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman

I enjoyed this historical novel, based loosely on the two authors' family histories, that tells the story of a Jewish Northerner, Jacob Kling, and his wife, alongside the story of an enslaved woman in New Orleans and her lover, an enslaved man who runs away to join Northern forces camped nearby. The story alternates between the four narratives. Jacob is a musician who befriends William, a classically trained flutist. Lily is Jacob's wife, a fervent abolitionist who sews quilts and rolls bandages to support the Union war effort. Stella is an enslaved woman kept as her owner's mistress in the French Quarter in New Orleans; she is in love with William. She uses her embroidery skills to provide maps on fabric for men leaving bondage and seeking the Northern army encampments to volunteer for the Union army. The plot bogged down a little in the middle, but when Jacob is injured and stops writing to Lily, she decides to travel across country to find him, and the book picks up for the second half. The stars align and eventually all the main characters meet. The ending is not without tragedy, but is hopeful.
 

James, by Percival Everett

 

I really liked this retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved man Jim's viewpoint. I found the story to be alternately funny and devastating. Written by the author of Erasure, the novel that the film American fiction was based on, you can imagine that James will be provocative and challenge the reader's perspectives about the events that took place in Huck Finn. Everett doesn't disappoint with this book. Telling the story from an adult's perspective and leaving out the many swaths of the original book in which Jim and Huck were separated, the result is a shorter book, but one that is piercing in its insight. I found James both riveting and unforgettable; I couldn't put it down. I read this over the summer for my September book club meeting. We chose to re-read Huck Finn first, which I think was a good approach, given that I hadn't read Huck Finn in 40 years. Reading them in order (Huck Finn, then James) draws your attention even more strongly to the way the stories are told and the emphases placed on specific events by the respective authors.

The cure for women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever, by Lydia Reeder

 

In the 19th century, women who wished to become doctors had limited opportunities to study because they were not welcome in most American universities. Many women resorted to attending university in Europe or one of the women-operated medical schools in the United States. Author Lydia Reeder spotlights a prominent woman doctor, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and her efforts to provide medical education to women in the U.S. Jacobi was trained in Europe but returned to America to teach and manage her own medical practice. She was a published medical researcher who pioneered scientific methods of conducting research with human subjects. As her influence grew, she played a key role in funding the Johns Hopkins graduate school for medicine, which was the first to provide a co-educational environment for medicine. Reeder also profiles many prominent women doctors as well as male doctors who were notorious for their opposition to allowing women to study medicine and others who became allies. In her later years, Jacobi became active in the suffrage cause and motivated many of New York City’s distinguished and wealthy women to support women’s right to vote. VERDICT This is a fascinating account of women’s rights issues that has continuing relevance today.

 

A version of this review was previously published in Library Journal here.