Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures Plus Facts and Fictions of Life

Helen H. Gardener (Alice Chenowith) was a protégé of the famous freethinker Colonel Robert G., and his wife Eva Ingersoll. He encouraged her to give a series of lectures on freethinking in 1884. These lectures were later published in 1885 as "Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures" under the name Helen Hamilton Gardener, a name she subsequently adopted in her personal life. During this time, Gardener became friends with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and joined the revision committee for Stanton's "The Woman's Bible." She was active in the woman's suffrage movement and highly instrumental in persuading President Woodrow Wilson to support the 19th Amendment. In 1920 (following the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote) she was appointed by President Wilson to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the highest federal position occupied by a woman to that time. This volume includes two of Gardener's books -- "Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures" and "Facts and Fictions of Life." Both are collections of lectures and essays on a variety of subjects. Gardener was a freethinker and extremely critical of Christianity's oppression of women. The book includes her lecture "Sex in Brain" in which she debunks the idea that women's brains are inferior to men.