Carol Berkin

Celebrated historian Carol Berkin offers a unique understanding of the tumultuous social and political landscape surrounding the lives of three 'accidental heroes'--women whose marriages provided them with position and influence. Drawing on private and public records, Berkin shows us how Angelina Grimke Weld bravely renounced her Southern family's values when she embraced the anti-slavery movement, only to be silenced within her marriage to fellow reformer Theodore Weld. In Varina Howell Davis, Berkin shows a woman of independent mind and spirit who incurred the disapproval of her husband, Jefferson Davis. The qualities that made her ill-suited for her role as First Lady of the Confederacy served her well when she lobbied for his release from prison. The wife of Ulysses S. Grant, Julia Dent Grant, was a model of genteel domesticity, content with the restrictions of motherhood and with the alternating fame and disgrace, wealth and poverty that her marriage entailed, until late in life when she glimpsed the price of dependency. Bringing these three remarkable women vividly to life, Berkin captures the tensions and animosities of the prewar era and the disruptions and anxieties generated by the war and its aftermath,  and connecting readers to America's national past with rare immediacy and verve. 

Over the last four decades, women's history has developed from a novel and marginal approach to history to an established and flourishing area of the discipline. Clio in the Classroom provides concise, up-to-date overviews of American women's history from colonial times to the present and takes into account ethnic, racial, and regional developments. Contributors offer concrete approaches for the classroom, including the use of oral history, visual resources, material culture, and group learning. Sexuality, citizenship, consumerism, religion, and other conceptual frameworks are employed as keys to understanding women's history and American history. Carol Berkin (Baruch College) is professor of history at the Graduate Center. Over the last four decades, women's history has developed from a novel and marginal approach to history to an established and flourishing area of the discipline. Clio in the Classroom provides concise, up-to-date overviews of American women's history from colonial times to the present and takes into account ethnic, racial, and regional developments. Contributors offer concrete approaches for the classroom, including the use of oral history, visual resources, material culture, and group learning. Sexuality, citizenship, consumerism, religion, and other conceptual frameworks are employed as keys to understanding women's history and American history. Carol Berkin (Baruch College) is professor of history at the Graduate Center. Over the last four decades, women's history has developed from a novel and marginal approach to history to an established and flourishing area of the discipline. Clio in the Classroom provides concise, up-to-date overviews of American women's history from colonial times to the present and takes into account ethnic, racial, and regional developments. Contributors offer concrete approaches for the classroom, including the use of oral history, visual resources, material culture, and group learning. Sexuality, citizenship, consumerism, religion, and other conceptual frameworks are employed as keys to understanding women's history and American history. 

The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American. In this groundbreaking history, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict. The women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers, and fathers died. Berkin also reveals that it was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband's place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.