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International Labor History Association Honorable Mention Book Award for 2025

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was involved in almost every major campaign of the U.S. Left in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. An outstanding orator, writer, and tactician, Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of the American labor movement. Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her, she devoted her life to the advancement of civil liberties. Here, Mary Anne Trasciatti traces Flynn’s personal and political life to explore the broader social issues of a fraught era.
 
Born in 1890, Flynn began her activist career by joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) when she was just sixteen, and she ended it as the first female chair of the American Communist Party, a position she held from 1961 until her death in 1964. In the intervening years she organized workers into unions, led strikes, championed women’s rights, supported anti-imperialist movements around the globe, protested deportation, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. Above all, she showed absolute devotion to workers and their struggles.
 
Slandered as an “un-American” in the anticommunist fervor of the 1940s and 1950s, Flynn was eventually ousted from the very organization she helped found, the American Civil Liberties Union, and imprisoned for two years. Though her own movement abandoned her, her commitment to the cause never wavered. This stirring biography illuminates Flynn’s inspiring life and worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of labor and civil liberties history.

One of the most compelling figures in colonial America, Elizabeth Murray (1726–1785) was a Scottish immigrant who settled in Boston in her early twenties and took up shopkeeping. For many years, she practiced her trade successfully while marrying three times, once to a much older man who left her an extremely rich widow. This biography chronicles the life of this extraordinary “ordinary” woman who tried to make a place for herself and other women in the world by asserting her own independence inside and outside of the home. 

As an importer and retailer of British goods, Murray conducted business with merchants and manufacturers in England and buyers in the American colonies, even traveling to London to select her own stock. Deeply satisfied by her work and the economic freedom it brought her, she acted as mentor to other women, helping them to establish shops of their own. She also protected her autonomy by demanding prenuptial agreements from her second and third husbands that gave her a measure of control over her property that was rare for a married woman of her day. 

The spirit of independence that Murray so valued in herself and nurtured in other women was severely tested by the upheavals of the American Revolution. With strong loyalties to both Britain and America, she was torn by the conflict, especially when close relatives chose opposing sides and her third husband abandoned her, leaving her to defend the family estate alone. Her wartime experiences—wild midnight rides, accusations of being a spy, quartering both royal and rebel troops, and brief imprisonment—vividly capture the turmoil of the Revolution and highlight the range of her political commitments.

An in-depth account of the life and career of Minnesota’s first modern architect

2024 Docomomo US Modernism in America Award of Excellence
2021 Finalist, Minnesota Book Award, Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction

Elizabeth “Lisl” Scheu Close (1912–2011) left an indelible mark on Minnesota’s built landscape during her six decades as an architect. In 1938, with her husband, Winston Close, she founded the state’s first architecture firm dedicated to modernism. In addition to designing the first International Style house in Minneapolis, the firm also created more than 250 handsome and efficiently planned modern residences. One of few women who were practicing architects in the mid-twentieth century, she blazed a trail for future generations of women in the profession.

As Jane King Hession shows, the trajectory of Lisl’s architectural career was shaped by the political, economic, and aesthetic upheavals of the twentieth century. Raised in a renowned modern house in Vienna, Austria, Lisl was exposed to revolutionary ideas in art and architecture at a young age. Forced to emigrate to the United States as the Nazis rose to power in Europe, she completed her architectural education at MIT. During the Depression, she struggled to find work and encountered challenges as a young woman in the field. In her pursuit of and devotion to a singular and successful career as a modern architect, she proved herself to be talented, determined, and adept at negotiating obstacles.

Through documentation of Lisl’s projects, this personal and professional biography also explores multiple aspects of modern architecture, including the innovative use of new materials and technologies, the design of prefabricated houses, and the relationship between residential design and changing American lifestyles. 

A crack shot, expert skinner and tanner, seamstress, sculptor, and later writer—a list that only hints at her intelligence and abilities—Ella Elgar Bird Dumont was one of those remarkable women who helped tame the Texas frontier. First married at sixteen to a Texas Ranger, she followed her husband to Comanche Indian country in King County, where they lived in a tepee while participating in the final slaughter of the buffalo. Living off the land until the frontier was opened for ranching, Ella and Tom Bird typified the Old West ideals of self-sufficiency and generosity, with a hesitancy to complain about the hard life in the late 1800s.

Yet, in one important way, Ella Dumont was unsuited for life on the frontier. Endowed with an instinctive desire and ability to carve and sculpt, she was largely prevented from pursuing her talents by the responsibilities of marriage and frontier life and later, widowhood with two small children. Even though her second marriage, to Auguste Dumont, made life more comfortable, the realities of her existence still prevented the fulfillment of her artistic longings.

Ella Bird Dumont’s memoir is rich with details of the frontier era in Texas, when Indian depredations were still a danger for isolated settlers, where animals ranged close enough to provide dinner and a new pair of gloves, and where sheer existence depended on skill, luck, and the kindness of strangers. The vividness and poignancy of her life, coupled with the wealth of historical material in the editor’s exhaustive notes, make this Texas pioneer’s autobiography a very special book.

 "A magisterially written, well-researched, informative, and entertaining biography of a woman who helped throw open the doors to broader participation and power for women in the Republican Party and American politics."
---Dave Dempsey, author of William G. Milliken: Michigan's Passionate Moderate

"Elly Peterson will be a text to which historians and researchers turn for insight into the yin and yang of mainstream politics in the mid-century."
---Patricia Sullivan, past president, Journalism and Women Symposium

"This lively portrait of a leading woman in the Republican Party between 1952 and 1982 also charts the party's shift to the right after 1964, revealingly viewed through the eyes of liberal Republican women. Intensively researched with ethnographic attention to the subtleties of political culture, Fitzgerald's book is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Republican Party changed during the turbulent decades after 1960 and how women and women's issues shaped those changes."
---Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History, State University of New York, Binghamton

"Sara Fitzgerald tells Peterson's story in this superb and timely biography. It carries a message that deserves the widest audience as the nation struggles to find needed consensus on critical issues amid poisonous political partisanship that has made it increasingly difficult for public officials to bridge their differences. I hope that every American reads it."
---Pulitzer Prize winner Haynes Johnson, from the Foreword

"To understand the quest for equal rights in America you really need to meet those women who were active at the time of transition. In this gripping biography we meet one woman who entered a male dominated world and triumphed."
---Francis X. Blouin Jr., Director, Bentley Historical Library

"Sara Fitzgerald's writing is as intelligent as it is entertaining."
---Best-selling novelist Diane Chamberlain

Elly Peterson was one of the highest ranking women in the Republican Party. In 1964 she ran for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate and became the first woman to serve as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. During the 1960s she grew disenchanted with the increasing conservatism of her party, united with other feminists to push for the Equal Rights Amendment and reproductive choice, battled Phyllis Schlafly to prevent her from gaining control of the National Federation of Republican Women, and became an independent.

Elly Peterson's story is a missing chapter in the political history of Michigan, as well as the United States. This new biography, written by Sara Fitzgerald (a Michigan native and former Washington Post editor), finally gives full credit to one of the first female political leaders in this country.

When Peterson resigned in 1970 as assistant chairman of the Republican National Committee, David Broder of the Washington Post wrote that "her abilities would have earned her the national chairmanship, were it not for the unwritten sex barrier both parties have erected around that job."

Inside the Illinois showdown that derailed the Equal Rights Amendment

In this gripping account of one of the most consequential political battles of the twentieth century, Mark R. DePue takes readers inside the fight that halted the Equal Rights Amendment. Drawing upon hundreds of hours of original oral history interviews, DePue reconstructs the drama, strategy, and emotion of the ERA showdown in Illinois, the state that became the amendment’s most critical battleground.

First introduced in Congress in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment has endured for more than a century as one of the most debated yet still unratified proposals in American constitutional history. Its ratification seemed closer than ever when Congress passed the ERA in 1972 and sent it to the states with a seven-year deadline, but in Illinois, a constitutional quirk stalled its momentum. Optimism faltered, and what followed was a political war like no other the state had ever seen. Illinois’ state legislature in Springfield became the epicenter of a national struggle over gender, power, and the future of the Constitution.

At the center of the storm stood Phyllis Schlafly, the formidable conservative activist from Alton, Illinois, whose STOP ERA movement transformed a faltering amendment into a rallying cry for the New Right. Opposing her and her allies was an array of feminist organizers, legislators, celebrities, clergy, union members, and grassroots activists—often divided among themselves—who believed that equality under the law was within reach. Bringing creativity, passion, and persistence to the cause, they staged inventive demonstrations, lobbied relentlessly, and fought for every vote.

What sets this book apart are its extraordinary cast of characters and the chance DePue gives them to speak for themselves. Through vivid first-person testimony gathered at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the University of Illinois Springfield, supporters and opponents alike reflect on their motivations, fears, strategies, and regrets. Their voices bring to life the packed committee hearings, late-night strategy sessions, and personal sacrifices behind the headlines.

By 1982, the amendment fell three states short of ratification nationwide. Illinois never delivered the votes that might have changed history.

More than a political chronicle, this is a story of conviction and conflict, ambition and compromise. It is the story of how a century-old amendment came tantalizingly close to becoming law—and how, in one state capitol, the battle over women’s equality reshaped a movement and left a constitutional promise still unfinished.

A compelling naval memoir of Arctic submarine duty—operations, engineering realities, and split‑second leadership choices in Emergency Deep.

Captain Alfred Scott McLaren served as commander of the USS Queenfish (SSN 651) from September 1969 to May 1973, the very height of the Cold War. As commander, McLaren led at least six major clandestine operations, including the first-ever exploration of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf: a perilous voyage detailed in his previous book Unknown Waters.

Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander conveys the entire spectrum of Captain McLaren’s experiences commanding the USS Queenfish, mainly in the waters of the Russian Far East and also off Vietnam. McLaren offers a riveting and deeply human story that illuminates the intensity and pressures of commanding a nuclear attack submarine in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Relying on his own notes and records, as well as discussions with former officers and shipmates, McLaren focuses on operational matters both great and small. He recounts his unique perspectives on attack-submarine tactics and exploratory techniques in high-risk or uncharted areas, matters of leadership and team-building and the morale of his crews, and the innumerable and often unforeseen ways his philosophy of command played out on a day-to-day basis, with consequences that ran the gamut from the mundane to the dire and life-threatening.

Readers are also treated to significant new information and insight on submarine strategy, maneuvers, and culture. Such details illuminate and bring to life, with both great humor and gravitas, the intensity and pressures on those engaged in covert missions on nuclear attack submarines.
 

While a growing number of popular and scholarly works focus on Asian Americans, most are devoted to the experiences of larger groups such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Indian Americans. As the field grows, there is a pressing need to understand the smaller and more recent immigrant communities. Emerging Voices fills this gap with its unique and compelling discussion of underrepresented groups, including Burmese, Indonesian, Mong, Hmong, Nepalese, Romani, Tibetan, and Thai Americans.

Unlike the earlier and larger groups of Asian immigrants to America, many of whom made the choice to emigrate to seek better economic opportunities, many of the groups discussed in this volume fled war or political persecution in their homeland. Forced to make drastic transitions in America with little physical or psychological preparation, questions of “why am I here,” “who am I,” and “why am I discriminated against,” remain at the heart of their post-emigration experiences.

Bringing together eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines, this collection considers a wide range of themes, including assimilation and adaptation, immigration patterns, community, education, ethnicity, economics, family, gender, marriage, religion, sexuality, and work.

Arguing for equality as the necessary foundation of liberty

During Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lifetime, the idea of universal human equality was under intensive assault. Repeatedly—in contexts ranging from slavery, to marriage, to politics and workers’ rights—Americans of the time were being told that equality was an obsolete ideal and that the future would belong to those who accepted the hard truth that liberty lies not in egalitarian values but in hierarchies of domination and submission. Greg Garvey’s Emerson and the Defense of Equality focuses on Emerson as a real-time defender of equality during the antebellum culture wars.

In contrast to studies that treat individual liberty as Emerson’s primary concern, Garvey argues that Emerson’s works define a broad and sustained defense of equality as the necessary foundation of liberty. When read as part of a debate about equality, Emerson’s Nature is a treatise on individuality and the common weal; his anti-slavery speeches and English Traits advance evolutionary theories to rebut polygenesist arguments for white supremacy; the essays “Love” and “Domestic Life” challenge gender spheres and explore equality in marriage, friendship, and citizenship. As Emerson speculates on the future, “Politics” and “The Young American” anticipate a “beneficent socialism” in which human rights will always have priority over property rights. In his career-long effort to defend a threatened ideal, Emerson develops an aspirational vision of society that understands equality to be a fundamental aspect of liberty.

Emily Dickinson has often been pictured as a sensitive but isolated poet—someone who published very little in her lifetime and limited herself to lyrics, considered to be the kind of poems most removed from social and political life. In recent years, scholars have challenged that view, and this book extends the discussion in valuable new directions. 

Domhnall Mitchell begins by focusing on three historical phenomena—the railroad, the Dickinson homestead, and horticulture—and argues that poems about trains, home, and flowers engage with their meanings in ways that extend beyond the confines of the aesthetic. He shows how Dickinson's poems and letters reveal the full complexity of her position as a woman situated within a larger social and economic class. 

In the second half of the book, Mitchell considers the ideological, textual, and editorial implications of Dickinson's strategic privatization of her art. He relates the particular forms of her manuscripts' appearance, distribution, and collation to aspects of her social as well as her literary consciousness. In a chapter that is certain to provoke debate, he explores what it means to read individual poems and letters in manuscript versions rather than in printed editions. By paying close attention to textual evidence, he makes the case that various features of the manuscripts are actually matters of accident or immediate convenience rather than the visual markers of a new aesthetic principle. 

Mitchell closes by using the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to explore the contradictions of a “private” poetry that engages verbally in multiple areas of nineteenth-century life and discourse. By attending to the contemporaneous particularities of recurrent words and images, he demonstrates that Dickinson could stay at home and still be at home in history, too.