The first colonists: voluntary and otherwise
The women of New England: goodwives, heretics, Indian captives, and witches
Daily life in the colonies: housekeeping, children, and sex
Toward the revolutionary war
1800-1860: true women, separate spheres, and many emergencies
Life before the civil war: cleanliness and corsetry
African American women: life in bondage
Women and abolition: white and Black, north and south
The civil war: nurses, wives, spies, and secret soldiers
Women go west: pioneers, homesteaders, and the fair but frail
The gilded age: stunts, shorthand, and study clubs
Immigrants: discovering the "woman's country"
Turn of the century: the arrival of the new woman
Reforming the world: suffrage, temperance, and other causes
The twenties: all the liberty you can use in the backseat of a Packard
The Depression: Ma Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt
World War II: "she's making history, working for victory"
The fifties: life at the far end of the pendulum
The sixties: the pendulum swings back with a vengeance.