Election 2008 made American history, but it was also the product of American history. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin smashed through some of the most enduring barriers to high political office, but their exceptional candidacies did not come out of nowhere. In these timely and accessible essays, a distinguished group of historians explores how the candidates both challenged and reinforced historic stereotypes of race and sex while echoing familiar themes in American politics and exploiting new digital technologies.

Contributors include Kathryn Kish Sklar on Clinton’s gender masquerade; Tiffany Ruby Patterson on the politics of black anger; Mitch Kachun on Michelle Obama and stereotypes about black women’s bodies; Glenda E. Gilmore on black women’s century of effort to expand political opportunities for African Americans; Tera W. Hunter on the lost legacy of Shirley Chisholm; Susan M. Hartmann on why the U.S. has not yet followed western democracies in electing a female head of state; Melanie Gustafson on Palin and the political traditions of the American West; Ronald Formisano on the populist resurgence in 2008; Paula Baker on how digital technologies threaten the secret ballot; Catherine E. Rymph on Palin’s distinctive brand of political feminism; and Elisabeth I. Perry on the new look of American leadership.

Acclaimed as groundbreaking since its publication, Women and the Republican Party, 1854-1924 explores the forces that propelled women to partisan activism in an era of widespread disfranchisement and provides a new perspective on how women fashioned their political strategies and identities before and after 1920. 

Melanie Susan Gustafson examines women's partisan history against the backdrop of women's political culture. Contesting the accepted notion that women were uninvolved in political parties before gaining the vote, Gustafson reveals the length and depth of women's partisan activism between the founding of the Republican Party, whose abolitionist agenda captured the loyalty of many women, and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Her account also looks at the complex interplay of partisan and nonpartisan activity; the fierce debates among women about how to best use their influence; the ebb and flow of enthusiasm for women's participation; and the third parties that fused the civic world of reform organizations with the electoral world of voting and legislation.