100 most important Women of the 20th century
   Kevin Markey & the Ladies' Home Journal
  1998 Meredith Books Des Moines IA USA
   ISBN: 0696208237


Women found their voice in the 20th century, no longer silent & passive, no longer confined to kitchens & bedrooms, women today can be in any profession they choose, thanks in great part to these most important women.

With a Foreword by Barbara Walters, who needs no introduction & is herself an important woman of the latter part of this century & an Introduction by Myrna Blyth, Editor-in-Chief of the Ladies' Home Journal, this big book is packed with the lives & times of a marvelous host of movers & shakers.

Whatever you might think of the choices of notable & celebrated women, all make for fascinating reading & had me looking up biographies of many included in this easy-to-read, magazine-formatted book.

Among the worldly Activists & Politicians group, are some generally unsung & others well-known. Having lived in Chicago for many years I was familiar with the influence of Jane Addams. I've seen, of course, our U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in action often on television. I did not know about Mary McLeod Bethune & this sent me hunting up for more. & so it goes through some very interesting lives of today & yesterday.

Rigoberta Mench & her tireless work in Guatemala; Alice Paul & equal rights; Eva Peron in Argentina; Suu Kyi of Burma or Jiang Qing of China. Funny how Phyllis Schlafly & Gloria Steinem get to share a two page spread. Mother Theresa glows with her unadorned joy of life while Margaret Thatcher reminds us that strong & vocal women earn the sobriquet: "Iron Lady".

Writers & Journalists are represented by some of our icons of coming of age, of womanhood in this century, of knowing aunts, exploring, ground-breaking users of the language. Most of the time we utter their words without realizing it, so deep now are they in our psyche.

Doctors & Scientists are a precious few - all, however, major thinkers & changers: - Virginia Apgar formulating that brilliantly simple safety rating of the symptoms of the newborn; to Helen Caldicott who shook us to our souls when she went up against the nuclear powers; to Rosalind Franklin, that fiercely serious molecular biologist whose x-ray crystallography paved the way for the Watson & Crick's exploration in the genetic helix; to Grace Hopper the midwife to the computer revolution; to Barbara McClintock for her award-winning work on genetics & maize & so on. I have mentioned just a score or so of the lesser known, the curiously chosen or the women who have touched my heart.

Entrepreneurs who we know familiarly & daily, in the clothes we choose, what we cook, what we read, our cosmetics, our weight-control, our lifestyles & what we watch on television, what we talk & think about.

Artists & Entertainers remind us how very diverse & innovative, enchanting & enduring are the Women of this Muse. Even as I worked-out to Jane Fonda's exuberant regimen, I was still hearing Janis Joplin's raspy energy. Viewing Frida Kahlo's works for the first time astonished me as did Madonna. I was never a glamor-fan so the inclusion of Marilyn Monroe & Greta Garbo seemed vague, at best - where was Ingrid Bergman or Elizabeth Windsor?

Athletes included most of my all-time heroines Gertrude Ederle for swimming the English Channel back in the 1920s, Sonjia Henie for turning her Olympic medal into a wonderful skating revue that I once actually saw in London; Billie Jean King for her splendid & vigorous championships on the tennis courts & so on.

Pioneers & Adventurers are the host of miscellaneous spirits that have moved us to be more than our tired, little selves. They have roused us to run, walk & raise awareness & funding for a cure for breast cancer. Helen Gurley Brown gave us good sex & fun; Betty Ford allowed us to acknowledge our wounds & Jane Roe gave us the awareness that pregnancy is a choice as had Margaret Sanger 60 years before. & that first woman in space? Valentina Tereshkova from a small village in Russia!

This is a wonderful effort - certainly one to be studied & read for a lifetime. Would make a super gift for everywoman about to begin their own illustrious lives or can now look back with wonder at the history they helped make!

What a grand company of women is the Ladies' Home Journal 100 most important Women of the 20th century.
(07/18/99)

Rebecca