Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers

Texas senator Hutchison follows American Heroines with an inspiring volume that highlights women who helped to pave the way for subsequent generations. It includes obligatory profiles of suffragists and First Ladies, but the book's merit is in the sketches of women who have made significant contributions to the arts and sciences, as well as those who made inroads in areas historically dominated by men-battlefields and boardrooms among them. A chapter on women in the military looks at women who have fought in wars dating back to the revolution, while a wide array of women's contributions to public health get a nod in another chapter. Profiles of novelists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Pearl S. Buck, Toni Morrison and Amy Tan are fascinating, though readers may find themselves flipping past the sections dedicated to women who have won household name status (Susan B. Anthony, Hillary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy and the like). There's enough here to pique almost any reader interested in women's history.