Nobel Women

This vivid biography of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Good Earth recounts Buck's life in relation to the course of American and Chinese history and politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

“In Burma, while thousands of political prisoners are detained and tortured, and thousands more flee the country to escape poverty and forced labor, a woman of delicate appearance and fierce determination leads her nation's struggle for freedom. They chant her name, ‘Aung San Suu Kyi! Democracy!’ Bringing this story to the world is Alan Clements, an American who spent five years in Rangoon as a Buddhist monk. Over a period of months Clements met with Aung San Suu Kyi at her home, shortly after her release from house arrest in July 1995. Their conversations became The Voice of Hope, Aung San Suu Kyi's first published work since her release.”

“Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950. Among her other celebrated novels are The Golden Notebook, The Fifth Child and Memoirs of a Survivor.” The second volume of her autobiography is entitled, Walking in the Shade.

The recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize describes her life as a feminist, political activist, and environmentalist in Kenya, detailing the 1977 establishment of the Green Belt Movement and her role in the transformation of Kenya's government.

Originally published in 1910, this was Jane Addams' most successful book. Now regarded as a classic of American social history, this first annotated edition is issued on the occasion of the Hull-House centennial.

“…represents the full span of her works … from the twilight of white rule in South Africa to the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime, and most recently, her role over the past seven years in confronting the contemporary phenomena of violence and the dangers of HIV. The range of this book is staggering, and the work in totality celebrates the lively perseverance of the life-loving individual in the face of political tumult, then the onslaught of a globalized world.”

“She was the child of American missionaries, but she spoke Chinese before she learned English, and her friends were the children of Chinese farmers. She took it for granted that she was Chinese herself until she was eight years old, when the terrorist uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion forced her family to flee for their lives. It was the first of many desperate flights. Flood, famine, drought, bandits, and war formed the background of Pearl's life in China… As a phenomenally successful writer and civil-rights campaigner, Buck did more than anyone else in her lifetime to change Western perceptions of China. In a world with its eyes trained on China today, she has much to tell us about what lies behind its astonishing reawakening.”

“The myth of Marie Curie—the penniless Polish immigrant who, through genius and obsessive persistence, endured years of toil and deprivation to produce radium, a luminous panacea for all the world's ills including cancer—has obscured the remarkable truth behind her discoveries. Curie's shrewd though controversial insight was that radioactivity was an atomic property that could be used to discover new elements. While her work won her two Nobel Prizes and transformed our world, it did not liberate her from the prejudices of either the male-dominated scientific community or society. Here is an all-too-human woman trying to balance science, love, and the family values that constitute her legacy.”

Discusses the lives of these women: Marie Sklodowska Curie -- Lise Meitner -- Emmy Noether -- Gerty Rednitz Cori -- Irene Joliet Curie --Barbara McClintock -- Maria Goeppert Mayer -- Rita Levi-Montalcini --Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin -- Chien-Shiung Wu -- Gertrude Elion -- Rosalind Franklin -- Rosalyn Sussman Yalow -- Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
Our print copy is a first edition. The second editon (1998) is available as an eBook.

“The commanding voice of Morrison's essays, speeches and reviews offers compelling insights into family, history, other writers and politics. The pieces span from 1971, when Morrison was an editor at Random House, to 2002, the year she won the Nobel Prize, and range from book introductions to thoughts on the nature of writing and reflections on 9/11.”