Interested in learning more women’s history? There are many titles available for purchase now on our web store and in the Cleveland History Center Museum Store.  Scroll through this curated list of recommended reads and continue shopping here. 

Damsels in Design: Women Pioneers in the Automotive Industry, 1939–1959

In the mid-1950s, an innovative group of women at General Motors (dubbed the Damsels of Design by marketers) and their counterparts at Ford, Hudson, Studebaker, Packard, and Tucker changed automotive history forever. Read the untold story of the women who excelled in the Mad Men era of automobile and industrial design!

Deeds Not Words: Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage

Twenty-nine award-winning textile artists from across the United States each crafted a quilt celebrating women’s suffrage. These dazzlingly varied, sometimes troubling, always inspiring artworks reflect the long and continuing fight for equal rights for all. Introductions summarize the history of women’s suffrage, an even more complicated subject than you might think, then dozens of art quilts continue the learning.

Flora Stone Mather: Daughter of Cleveland’s Euclid Avenue & Ohio’s Western Reserve

This is the biography of one of Cleveland’s leading philanthropists. In 1881 Flora wed her neighbor, Samuel Mather, a marriage that united two of Cleveland’s―and the nation’s―wealthiest and most influential families. The region and city still benefit from her generosity, compassion, and foresight. be important reading for students of women’s studies and the history of philanthropy as well as those interested in Ohio’s Western Reserve and its people.

Often condemned as a form of oppression, fashion could and did allow women to express modern gender identities and promote feminist ideas. Einav Rabinovitch-Fox examines how clothes empowered women, and particularly women barred from positions of influence due to race or class. A fascinating account of clothing as an everyday feminist practice, Dressed for Freedom brings fashion into discussions of American feminism during the long twentieth century. A part of our By the Book Author Series! 

Sisters of Notre Dame of Cleveland

Since their arrival in Cleveland in 1874 to serve German Catholic immigrants, the Sisters of Notre Dame (SND) have given their time, skills, and compassion to the people of Northern Ohio and beyond.

The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote

The suffragists face vicious opposition from politicians, clergy, corporations, and racists who don’t want black women voting. […][I]n one hot summer, they all converge for a confrontation, replete with booze and blackmail, betrayal and courage. Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, The Woman’s Hour is the gripping story of how America’s women won their own freedom, and the opening campaign in the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.

Liberated Spirits: Two Women Who Battled Over Prohibition

A provocative new take on the women behind a perennially fascinating subject–Prohibition–by bestselling author and historian Hugh Ambrose. These two Constitutional Amendments enabled women to redefine themselves and their place in society in a way historians have neglected to explore. Liberated Spirits describes how the fight both to pass and later to repeal Prohibition was driven by women, as exemplified by two remarkable women in particular.

The Woman Suffrage Cookbook: The 1886 Classic

The Woman Suffrage Cookbook was the first of several fundraising cookbooks published in support of the movement behind the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Edited and compiled by Hattie A. Burr, it features recipes from prominent suffragists as well as from women eminent in their fields: teachers, lecturers, physicians, ministers, and authors.

The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom, by Toni Morrison

At once the ideal introduction to Lorain native Toni Morrison and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith. This inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison’s entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction to tell a story of self-actualization.

CHILDREN’S:

Fight of the Century: Alice Paul Battles Woodrow Wilson for the Vote

The fight for women’s suffrage between women’s rights leader Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson is creatively presented as a four-round boxing match in this energetic nonfiction picture book.” Sarah Green’s bright, detailed illustrations perfectly accompany award-winning author Barb Rosenstock’s captivating narrative. Grade Level: 2 – 5

Who Was Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem

A lyrical picture book debut from #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman and #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator Loren Long