This excellent book describes how women have always worked in what is today the USA. Well written with good examples it tells the story of how women moved from working primarily at home industries through early factory days (and how factories were made acceptable and then degraded into sweat shops and worse). It continues the story through the 19th and 20th centuries, discussing how often public perceptions and rhetoric conflicted with actual work practices. I am very glad it is out in a new edition and that a new generation will have easy access to it.

Historians Linda Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris and Kathryn Kish Sklar, have edited a volume of essays that is an example of what they describe as the fourth stage of development of women's history, achieving a synthesis of what is known about men and women. Their volume is an attempt to provide a synthesis of historical scholarship on gender and its intersection with power and knowledge.

Their volume maps this intersection with a scope that is both chronologically and topically broad. The collected essays address important issues throughout the entire history of the United States, beginning with Kerber's discussion of the obligations of women's citizenship in Revolutionary America and ending with Jane Sherron De Hart's examination of female representation among elected officials in the 1990s. Topically, while there is a significant emphasis on women's reform movements, especially in the Progressive Era, topics as diverse as the cultural phenomenon of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and the creation of Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia comprise the full range of gender issues examined. The claim of the title of their edited volume, that United States history is as much women's history as it is men's, is supported forcefully by the works published. None of these essays are work characteristic of earlier stages of development of the field of women's history. Evidence of women's historical existence has been found; women's contributions to significant fields, once thought to have been only the work of men have been documented; and histories have been written chronicling reform movements and other developments that were fundamentally effected by the role of women.

The overarching argument of the editors and contributors is that women's history should no longer be ghettoized as a separate historical field, but rather should be synthesized into a larger historical narrative. Women's history should no longer be a subfield of social history, based on the claim that women represent some type of separate social group. Rather, based on the identification of the political nature women's public and private actions women's history is political history. This specific volume and its essays argue that this women's history should be central to the narrative of United States history.

One flaw that can be identified in this volume, U.S. History as Women's History, is that despite the inclusion of the word in its title, the editors fail to define the term feminist. Similarly, the qualifier new is not addressed adequately. Does this volume represent a new feminist viewpoint, or does the subtitle simply indicate that these are newly published feminist essays, not representing any analytical shift, but simply recognizing the completion of new works of scholarship? These are questions that would have benefited from these authors' expertise.

Read this book. I read it for the first time 8 yrs ago in 10th grade for a high school english class and I still read it over and over. Some might feel that the book isn't accurate in terms of the historical references. I think those people are missing the point. It's fiction based loosely on the author's experiences. And it is not a "pity-me" book as some have said. The narrator - the main character Sara - is so determined to make her own path in life and feels so strongly about the injustices of an old-world mentality, that you can't help but feel for her struggle. It is a quick, heart-warming and inspiring read and will no doubt stay with you whether your parents are immigrants or not.

This may sound crazy, but this little book helped bring me out of a severe depression. I was seriously contemplating suicide when my friend Wilma gave me a copy of this book that she had to read for her college literature class. I feel like a new person after following the experiences of the main character of the story, Sarah as she works her way through college as a lowly daughter of poor Jewish immigrants from Poland. I guess it hit home because I from Lithuania, which is right next door to Poland and because I have a lot of Polish friends. Anyway, to make my point, if you want to read a good book, and you can't afford prozac, then read this book!

Some 75 years after its initial publication, Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers surely deserves recognition as a classic of Amerian literature. I regret not having read this moving and provocative novel earlier in my life; I know its themes of self-discovery, conflicted Jewish identity and Americanization would have encouaged both identification and introspection. I am astonished that high schools today do not include this as an essential core text (instead opting to use F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, also published in 1925 as a paradigmatic novel). Yezierska's novel has the ring of truth to it, resonating with such crucial themes as self-awareness, cultural marginalization of immigrants, loss and recovery of ethnic identity, feminist discontent and awakening sexuality. In my mind, Sara Smolinsky has far more to teach us about the American Dream than Jay Gatsby. Yet, the prevailing literary criticism lionizes the WASP world-view of Fitzgerald and essentially disregards the Jewish/immigrant sensibilities of Yezierska.

The novel is uncommonly accessible. Dialogue carries much of the action; the chapters could be read as independent short stories, and internal soliloquies provide us with the opportunity to test our own judgments against those of the earnest and self-actualizing Sara Smolinsky. The suffocating but omniscient presence of her tyrannical father best represents Sara's constant confrontation with conflict. The dilemmas provided by the father-daughter relationship ring with universal truths even though the setting is particular to the Hester Street Easter European Jewish experience. I know that my Latino, Asian, and Pacific Islander students could easily translate this novel, some three generations old, into their own experiences.

The Persea Books edition owes its existence to the admirable efforts of Professor Alice Kessler-Harris, whose exceptional introductory forewards are worth the price of the edition alone. Professor Kessler-Harris sheds light not only on Yezierska's tumultuous life but provides a scholarly discussion of the significance of the novel.

This book has lots of great information, but it will put you to sleep if you are truly not interested in this subject. I might be a little biased because this book was assigned reading in my gender studies class and it was really a tall order us to read it in two weeks. I don't even think I finished it.