To Be Young Was Very Heaven: Women in New York Before the First World War

Was there ever a time in America that could be described as the golden age of women? Certainly each era has had its perils, but To Be Young Was Very Heaven persuasively argues that the decade before World War I held promise and realization for many women artists and crusaders in New York. Fights for birth control, the vote, the labor movement, parity in wages, and simple respect were in full swing. Sandra Adickes combines lively quotes with a wealth of sometimes overearnest background research as she sketches powerhouses like Marie Jenney Howe, a suffragist and founder of the women's club Heterodoxy, from which early inklings of feminism emerged; settlement worker Jane Addams; socialist feminist lawyer Crystal Eastman; international labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She adeptly captures the contradictions of that time and place, too, when such women rocked the social barricades but the mayor of New York could congratulate public education for its role in turning every girl into a useful housekeeper who knows how to "sing a little, dance a little ... and at the same time knows how to cook to make her husband good-natured." --Francesca Coltrera