Living with History / Making Social Change

“This book is a gift from a great historian to all those who seek a life of learning, teaching, and making change. Gerda Lerner’s powerful memoir, Fireweed, ended where this collection begins, with her emergence as a founder of the modern field of Women’s History. Here we get an inside view of how a generation of women scholars transformed a profession and how, in practice, one of that generation’s preeminent leaders has taught later generations to think and write. Perhaps most important, we learn by example how a lifetime of courage and reflection can enable one to meet old age with courage and grace.” — Jacquelyn Hall, Spruill Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Gerda Lerner’s voice rings true in these essays, spirited witnesses to how thought and action have connected in the life of a remarkable writer and eloquent testimonies to the historical context in which history is practiced. They have much to teach us all.” — Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies

“Living with History / Making Social Change is a moving self portrait that provides a sense of Lerner as a singularly creative and forceful individual who has participated in — and learned from — some of the major social movements of our time. There is inspiration to be found in each of these essays.” — Alice Kessler-Harris, Columbia University

“Gerda Lerner offers a rare blend of the personal, the political, and the professional that illuminates the interconnected growth of the women’s movement and Women’s History in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Blending autobiography with Lerner’s own interpretive writings, Living with History / Making Social Change provides a rich set of interconnected views of her thinking and her involvement with feminism over a half century of dramatic change.” — Thomas Dublin, State University of New York at Binghamton

“A compelling blend of professional and personal reflections by a leading public intellectual who helped create the field of Women’s History. Every page carries an insight.” — Kathryn Kish Sklar, author of Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900

“In this extraordinary and fascinating collection of essays, Gerda Lerner, the most distinguished pioneer of Women’s History, gives us an autobiographical account of her efforts to transform history and society through the study of women’s lives. Here is the deeply examined life of a great intellectual, a feminist theorist, an imaginative educator, and a relentless political activist. Her meditation on aging will no doubt become a classic essay for all of us who follow in her path.” — Ruth Rosen, Emerita, University of California, Davis, author of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America

“Gerda Lerner is a pioneer, a visionary, a path-breaker. The feminist revolution would have been severely impoverished without her remarkable contributions to Women’s History and scholarship.” — Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author, founding editor of Ms. magazine

“No generation lives to see the struggle’s completion, but Lerner’s Living With History / Making Social Change is valuable to feminist and postcolonial scholars in part because it connects the dots.” — Women’s Review of Books

“Ranging over a vast variety of ideas, events, causes and convictions, Gerda Lerner explores the complex collective issues effecting women. . . . Strongly recommend[ed] as an informative and inspiring read, not only for those interested in Gerda Lerner and Women’s History, but for anyone interested in the myriad ways that historians can play a vital and positive role in the world.” — Left History