Stories About Women Who Changed The World

In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France. Sarah Rose draws on recently de­classified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women.

The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.

The first major biography of Constance Baker Motley, one of our most influential judges and the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. As an activist lawyer, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws in the South. Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country.

This inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison’s entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction — from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard — to tell a story of self-actualization. It aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison’s literary vision.

Journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.

Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to winning an Oscar for her performance in Funny Girl. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming.

Based on years of on-the-ground reporting, The Daughters of Kobani is the unforgettable story of the women of the Kurdish militia that improbably became part of the world’s best hope for stopping ISIS in Syria. Drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon introduces us to the women fighting on the front lines, determined to not only extinguish the terror of ISIS but also prove that women could lead in war and must enjoy equal rights come the peace.

In this large, comprehensive, revelatory biography, Jane Sherron De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, her meticulous jurisprudence: her desire to make We the People more united and our union more perfect.

Cixi’s extraordinary reign saw the birth of modern China. Under her, the ancient country attained industries, railways, electricity, and a military with up-to-date weaponry. She abolished foot-binding, inaugurated women’s liberation, and embarked on a path to introduce voting rights. Packed with drama, this groundbreaking biography powerfully reforms our view of a crucial period in China’s — and the world’s — history.

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country.

The Diary of a Young Girl, for both young readers and adults,  continues to capture the remarkable spirit of Anne Frank, who for a time survived the worst horror the modern world has seen — and who remained triumphantly and heartbreakingly human throughout her ordeal.

Rachel Ignotofsky’s Women in Science highlights the contributions of fifty notable women to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from the ancient to the modern world.

In 1991, Anita Hill began something that’s still unfinished work. The issues of gender violence, touching on sex, race, age, and power, are as urgent today as they were when she first testified against Clarence Thomas. Believing is a manifesto about the origins and course of gender violence in our society; a combination of memoir, personal accounts, law, and social analysis, and a powerful call to arms from one of our most prominent and poised survivors.

A collection of speeches and writings by political activist Angela Davis which address the political and social changes of the past decade as they are concerned with the struggle for racial, sexual, and economic equality.

In Sisters of Mokama, Thottam draws upon twenty years’ worth of research to tell this inspiring story for the first time. She brings to life the hopes, struggles, and accomplishments of these ordinary women — both American and Indian — who succeeded against the odds during the tumult and trauma of the years after World War II and Partition. Pain and loss were everywhere for the women of that time, but the collapse of the old orders provided the women of Nazareth Hospital with an opening — a chance to create for themselves lives that would never have been possible otherwise.

A powerful memoir from Katalin Karikó, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines. Breaking Through is a testament to one woman’s commitment to laboring intensely in obscurity — knowing she might never be recognized in a culture that is driven by prestige, power, and privilege — because she believed her work would save lives.

In this stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, Azar Nafisi shares her memories of living in thrall with a powerful and complex mother against the backdrop of a country’s political revolution.

A bold and gripping graphic history of the fight for women’s rights by the New York Times bestselling author of Hood Feminism.

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War.

Without politics or polemics, Rosalind Miles’s brilliant and witty book overturns centuries of preconceptions to restore women to their rightful place at the center of culture, revolution, empire, war, and peace. Spiced with tales of individual women who have shaped civilization, celebrating the work and lives of women around the world, and distinguished by a wealth of research, Who Cooked the Last Supper? redefines our concept of historical reality.

A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century’s most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York.

A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger.

A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.

A finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and longlisted for the National Book Award, Patricia Bell-Scott’s The Firebrand and the First Lady is the riveting history, two decades in the making, of how a brilliant writer-turned-activist and the first lady of the United States forged an enduring friendship that helped to alter the course of race and racism in America.

In this spirited account, Billie Jean King details her life’s journey to find her true self. An inspiring and intimate self-portrait of the champion of equality that encompasses her brilliant tennis career, unwavering activism, and ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice.

Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, Dava Sobel’s The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

Covering Nobel Prize winners and major innovators, as well as lesser-known but hugely significant scientists who influence our every day, Rachel Swaby’s vibrant profiles span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one’s ideas developed, from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they’re best known. This fascinating tour reveals 52 women at their best — while encouraging and inspiring a new generation of girls to put on their lab coats.

No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green, America’s first female tycoon. A strong woman who forged her own path, she was worth at least $100 million by the end of her life in 1916 — equal to about $2.5 billion today.

A magisterial portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, and a major reevaluation of the profound yet underappreciated impact the First Lady’s political instincts had on LBJ’s presidency.

A groundbreaking Dakota author and activist chronicles her refusal to assimilate into nineteenth-century white society and her mission to preserve her culture — with an introduction by Layli Long Soldier, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Whereas.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure German princess who became one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou traces the best and worst of the American experience in an achingly personal way. Angelou has chronicled her remarkable journey and inspired people of every generation and nationality to embrace life with commitment and passion.

Gloria Steinem — writer, activist, organizer, and inspiring leader — now tells a story she has never told before, a candid account of her life as a traveler, a listener, and a catalyst for change.

Jane Jacobs was a phenomenal woman who wrote seven groundbreaking books, saved neighborhoods, stopped expressways, was arrested twice, and engaged in thousands of impassioned debates — all of which she won.

The remarkable story of the intrepid French archaeologist who led the international effort to save ancient Egyptian temples from the floodwaters of the Aswan Dam, by the New York Times bestselling author of Madame Fourcade’s Secret War.

Megan Rapinoe, Olympic gold medalist and two-time Women’s World Cup champion, reveals for the first time her life both on and off the field. Guided by her personal journey into social justice, brimming with humor, humanity, and joy, she reveals that real, concrete change lies within all of us, and asks: If we all have the same resource — this one precious life, made up of the decisions we make every day — what are you going to do?

A long over-due tribute to the extraordinary woman who was Winston Churchill’s closest confident, fiercest critic, and shrewdest political advisor that captures the intimate dynamic of one of history’s most fateful marriages, as seen on The Crown.

In the first volume of an exciting new series, bestselling author Alison Weir brings the dramatic reigns of England’s medieval queens to life. The lives of England’s medieval queens were packed with incident — love, intrigue, betrayal, adultery, and warfare — but their stories have been largely obscured by centuries of myth and omission. Now esteemed biographer Alison Weir provides a fresh perspective and restores these women to their rightful place in history.

Henrietta Lacks’s cells — taken without her knowledge — became one of the most important tools in medicine. Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia — a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo — to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous biographies, yet no one has ever examined their lives in one book — until now. In Romantic Outlaws, Charlotte Gordon reunites two courageous women who should have shared their lives but instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy.