The Majority Finds Its Past

“Lerner’s fervent personal and professional commitment to developing the field of women’s history should continue to spur researchers to study their own past, to pose new questions, and to offer new critiques and conceptualizations in an ongoing effort to practice women’s history and women’s studies.” — Feminist Teacher

“Gerda Lerner has done more than most and arguably more than anyone to establish the history of women as a field of inquiry. Like other historians, since the 1960s she has been undertaking scrupulous research and writing lucid narratives; unlike historians in other fields, she had first to demand respect for her subject. She did this most effectively in the essays that are collected here.” — Linda K. Kerber, from the Foreword

“In a dozen keen and tough-minded essays, Gerda Lerner unravels the triple knots of sex, class, and race — and helps American women understand where we must go by showing us so clearly where we have been.” — Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Ms. Magazine

“Even historians who read these provocative essays as they appeared will find stimulation in re-reading them as a developing argument, and will come away with much to think about. For many others, this volume should provide an excellent introduction to the shift in perspective which takes place when women as well as men are viewed as part of the historical process, a shift which Gerda Lerner has done so much to bring about.” — Ann Firor Scott, Duke University, Emerita

“This volume includes some of the most important and influential articles written in women’s history.” — Katherine Kish Sklar, Binghamton University

“These essays have richness, breadth, and importance. . . . They are truly impassioned as well as wise and learned explorations. . . . They compose the intellectual autobiography of a feminist historian of the first order.” — Katherine Frank, Miami Herald