Christine Stansell

In this brilliant and vivid study of life in New York City during the years between the creation of the republic and the Civil War, a distinguished historian explores the position of men and women in both the poor and middle classes, the conflict between women of the laboring poor and those of the genteel classes who tried to help them and the ways in which laboring women traced out unforeseen possibilities for themselves in work and in politics.

This is an interesting survey of a critical era in New York history, when Greenwich Village emerged as the focus of modernism, and the city came to dominate the emerging culture of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, it is also quite repetitive, and often unnecessarily verbose. I found the chapters on the era in Mike Wallace's "Greater Gotham" clearer, more pointed, and better at placing cultural modernism in a socio-economic context.

My 25th or 28th book on New York City at the turn of the 20th Century. We might never return to these progressive and exciting days. The chapters about the women of this cultrual era are especially compelling.

This is a collection of essays ranging from historical analysis to political commentary. Excellent academic, feminist collection about sex and sexuality.