Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace

Book excerpt: "'Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace' explores the social and political activism of American Jewish women from approximately 1890 through World War II. Written in an engaging style, the book demonstrates that no history of the suffrage, birth control, or peace movements in the United States is complete without analyzing the impact of Jewish women's presence. The volume is based on years of extensive primary-source research in more than a dozen archives and hundreds of published primary sources, many of which have previously never been seen. Voluminous personal papers and institutional records paint a vivid picture of a world in which both middle-class and working-class American Jewish women were consistently and publicly engaged in all the major issues of their day and worked closely with their non-Jewish counterparts on behalf of activist causes"--Page 4 of cover.