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Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. 729p. index. $45.00, ISBN 0-674-01488X.
What if a scholarly biographical dictionary was produced as if women had made significant contributions in all areas of civilization throughout the history of the United States? That was the radical notion entertained by two Harvard historians and Radcliffe College's administrators in the mid-1950s. College President W.K. Jordan and Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger proactively supported the acquisition of primary resources of women's history, and by 1950 Radcliffe had established its Women's Archives research library. Recognizing the omission of women from most history books, Schlesinger was instrumental in initiating the creation of a dictionary about women and suggested the venerable Dictionary of American Biography (1928-1958)(1) as its model. The three-volume Notable American Women, 1607-1950 was published in 1971, profiling 1,359 women who died before 1951. This landmark set was in the vanguard of publications that reflected the secondwave feminist movement's impact on the publishing world in the 1970s. Volume 4, Notable American Women: The Modern Period, was published in 1980, covering 442 women who died between 1951 and 1975. Now we have Volume 5, which contains entries for 483 women who died between 1976 and 1999.
For each volume, the same guidelines have been used in selecting women to profile: "the subject's...