Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: Women’s History

Enjoy this week's Outstanding Academic Titles list snippet: Five titles pertaining to Women's history

Posted on March 6, 2025 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2024 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles to commemorate Women’s History Month. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. The six: the untold story of America’s first women astronauts
Grush, Loren. Scribner, 2023

In the early history of NASA, astronauts were white men from the military fighter pilot ranks. While women lobbied to join the astronaut corps, NASA rejected their efforts and their political leadership. However, at the beginning of the Space Shuttle era in the late 1970s, NASA made a conscious effort to recruit women and more diverse candidates as astronauts. In addition, a new category of astronaut—the mission specialist, who performed a range of scientific, medical, and engineering experiments during a spaceflight mission—was created. These mission specialists typically had doctoral degrees (MD or PhD). In 1978, 6 women were selected from 8,000 applicants as mission specialists: Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon. Grush (science journalist) focuses on their individual and collective stories, illustrating the many societal and sexist challenges they faced. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, and Judith Resnik died in the 1986 Challenger explosion. All six made a unique mark on history. View on Amazon

2. Women artists in midcentury America: a history in ten exhibitions
Belasco, Daniel. Reaktion Books, 2024

Women Artists in Midcentury America is a timely and essential contribution to art historical knowledge of women artists and the wide variety of institutions that supported them with all-women shows from 1943 to 1962. Belasco (Al Held Foundation) chose 10 illuminating exhibitions for his book from about 50 he found during his research. One hopes his volume will encourage scholarship on the shows he was not able to include, even though a comprehensive list is not included and the bibliography does not feature archival materials. Organized chronologically by exhibition beginning with Exhibition by 31 Women at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of the Century Gallery and ending with the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s 1962 exhibition Women Artists in America Today, each chapter uses its titular show as a springboard for exploring a different theme or artistic medium, including race, photography, education, women artists groups, and democracy. This inspired structure yields a wealth of contextual information about and analysis of the careers of now-canonical artists, such as Ruth Asawa, Margaret Bourke-White, and Elaine de Kooning. View on Amazon

3. She played and sang: Jane Austen and music
Dooley, Gillian. Manchester University Press, 2024

As a devotee of Jane Austen, Dooley’s She Played and Sang was a delight to read. This text is extensively researched and shows the author’s considerable knowledge of traditional and contemporary Jane Austen scholarship. The text really flourishes in the comprehensive use of both Jane Austen primary sources and the primary source material of Regency-era music and lyrics. Dooley (Flinders Univ., Australia) shows the wide-ranging uses of music in the Regency era and how Austen’s work shows the depth of her knowledge of the culture, politics, and social norms of her lifetime. Music provided social opportunities, was a medium through which people of the Regency era could display status and skill, and served as a mechanism for people to convey emotion and opinions in a socially approved setting during this time frame. Through Austen’s letters, Dooley shows how readers can better understand the writer through her knowledge of music and how she and others interacted through it.  View on Amazon

4. Women in science now: stories and strategies for achieving equity Munoz, Lisa M. P. Columbia, 2023

Science writer and consultant Munoz presents a lucid compilation of evidence, including diverse first-person accounts, to illustrate women scientists within their communities. Scientists are human, i.e., prone to implicit biases that refute the way they would like to think of themselves. This book adds to the growing literature on why there are still too few women in science. A social justice lens demands reflections on the ways gender and intersectionality influence whose voice is heard. Knowing about (and experiencing) bias is an additional factor in the recruitment and retention of women and minorities. Therefore, each data-informed chapter concentrates on how to fix the system rather than “fixing” women. Some solutions include starting early, developing a “constellation” of mentorship, and implementing civility interventions. Munoz emphasizes the impacts of policy on enacting real change. Using the scientific method, this book busts myths, evaluates multifaceted, key takeaways, and addresses the power differentials bolstering the veneer of meritocracy.  View on Amazon.

5. American classicist: the life and loves of Edith Hamilton Houseman, Victoria. Princeton, 2023

A monumental biography of Edith Hamilton, America’s best-known popular interpreter of ancient Greece, this volume does full justice to both her scholarly interests and political commitments. Born to easy circumstances, Hamilton came of age at a time of unparalleled academic and civic possibilities for women. Although her family circumstances were reduced after she left school, she was not only able to attend Bryn Mawr College but also to pursue graduate study in Germany, eventually receiving her BA and MA from Bryn Mawr. Lacking both the means and the interest to pursue a PhD, she took up a position as headmistress of Bryn Mawr College School in Baltimore, which she held for 26 years. On her resignation, she and her future life partner, Doris Reid (her former student), settled in New York City, where Hamilton began her writing career, publishing her first book, The Greek Way, at the age of 62. For the next 30 years she published steadily, eventually gaining recognition from professional classicists. View on Amazon.

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