No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith (Rutgers Series on Women and Politics)
Drawing upon Smith's congressional papers and more than 100 hours of interviews, Sherman (history, Univ. of Memphis) beautifully explores the ambivalence surrounding this woman, active in national politics from the 1940s to the 1960s. For many years the only woman senator, Smith was a longtime supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and an advocate for women's presence in the military. But in her 1948 campaign, she released a statement that said she was "a champion for the women" but "no feminist" because "a woman's viewpoint should be...free of any emphasis on feminine interest." Sherman writes a clear narrative, covering the bases without getting mired in detail, of the life of this idiosyncratic but iconic political figure. A fine biography that will appeal to both scholars and general readers.ACynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DCCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.