A Room at a Time

Reviews / Votes

Freeman deftly weaves together the many intricate political, moral, and social complications of her story . . . to fashion an insightful, fascinating portrait of the ongoing fight for women to partake fully in U.S. political life. * Publishers Weekly * Splendid. * Women's Review of Books * This comprehensively researched and cogently written book is the best account we have of the invasion of American politics by women-a process that has extensively influenced our past and may very likely transform our future. -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The untold story of American women's sometimes successful efforts to gain access and influence in the major American political parties from the 1880s forward. A carefully researched, crisply written, illuminating account of progress and frustration. I recommend it. -- Jeane Kirkpatrick Draws upon the experience of many different women-black and white, professional politicians, and amateurs, from all regions and types of parties-to illustrate how the major political parties tried to ignore women, and women's strategies for being heard. -- Shirley Chisholm, former Member of Congress; first woman and first African-American to seek the Democratic nomination for President Jo Freeman breaks new ground with her comprehensive account of the rise of women as active participants in American politics over more than a century. With a fine eye for human detail, she tells the story of women, many now largely forgotten, who not only gave leadership to reform movements, but also penetrated ruling party machines. Her findings will be illuminating to scholars and absorbing to general readers. -- A James Reichley, Senior Fellow; Georgetown University; author of The Life of the Parties Jo Freeman uncovers the hidden facts of women in twentieth-century party politics-whether feminists, reformers, or party women-and so creates an inside, readable, and non-partisan history of how politics really works. Every voter, politician, women's studies course, and American history student needs this book. A Room at a Time is a landmark. * Gloria Steinem * The book clearly marks a massive research effort and is thoroughly documented. It provides a comprehensive overview of women's political history integrated with that of American political parties. Freeman has a mastery of how politics works in America and accurately describes the historical development and operation of six different party systems. * American Review of Politics * A compendium of useful facts and many keen formulations. Freeman's book is conscientiously researched. * Journal of American History * Jo Freeman's masterful A Room at a Time shares many of the good qualities of her earlier The Politics of Women's Liberation. Freeman has an amazing ability to gather enormous numbers of facts from varied and sometimes obscure places. Even more important, by simplifying and clarifying multifaceted phenomena she provides the reader with frameworks to make sence of complex processes. A Room at a Time develops a compelling argument about the ways that women's involvement in electoral politics developed out of moral reform and women's rights activities. * Women and Politics * In A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics, prizewinning feminist scholar Jo Freeman follows the drama of women's participation in mainstream politics from the early nineteenth century up to the 1960s, with special attention to the period since the 1880s when the neglected political players she calls the "pary women"-those largely volunteer Democratic and Republican party workers-came into their own. * Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society *