What is the best way to review an encyclopaedia? This question was a major concern for me while I was reading Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, realizing that this compendium of scholarly essays, historical documents, illustrations, and bibliographical references was truly encyclopaedic in nature. Linda Kerber’s and Jane Sharron de Hart’s edited compilation of more than 400 years of women’s history in the United States has been reissued in 2004 in its 6^th edition (the first edition dating to 1982), and this alone acts as overwhelming proof to the book’s continuous importance for students and teachers interested in any of the wide-ranging aspects concerning women’s lives in the U.S., past and present.

Structurally, Women’s America is divided, after an introduction to the history of (New) Women’s History by the editors, into four large historical periods: “Traditional America,” 1600-1820, a roughly one hundred-page section; the age of U.S.-American industrialization, 1820-1900, covering a little over 150 pages; the 20^th century up to World War II of about 180 pages; and the largest section, covering post-war history and issues on more than 200 pages. These four sections, in turn, are divided into academic articles--their perspectives ranging from history and the social sciences to law, literature, and culture—on the one hand and pivotal historical documents on the other. In both sections, the editors briefly introduce the subsequent article, contextualizing it both in terms of those concerns prevailing throughout women’s history as well as within the specific historical period at issue. These introductory paragraphs are invaluable for the reader’s broader understanding of the topic at stake, as are the challenging study questions that follow.

That most essays as well as all the legal and other historical documents are shortened and/or edited by Kerber and de Hart is no setback at all for this monumental (700+-pp.) compendium. Instead, the incredible amount of editorial work accomplished here greatly helps the student focus on the central aspects of each work and, perhaps even more importantly, enhances the accessibility of documents written in alien idiom to many of us, such as 17^th century, non-standard English or 21^st century legal jargon.

Regarding content, Kerber and de Hart have done an equally laudable job. I was unable to think of a single topic in women’s histories left uncovered by the book: from labour organisation to reproductive rights and marital laws, suffrage and equality issues to women’s—including enslaved women’s--immigration experience, from women’s experiences during the Civil War to witchcraft trials and the lynchings of African Americans, Women’s America leaves hardly any topic unexplored. We learn of such icons in women’s history in the United States as Pocahontas, Anne Hutchinson, Sojourner Truth, the Grimké sisters, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, the Shirelles and Madonna, and many more; notably, all of these path-breaking, brave woman warriors are situated against their cultural backgrounds and their times. Another feat accomplished in this respect is that the black-and-white illustrations give faces to these women’s names, albeit perhaps not as extensively as one would wish. Yet personal accounts, such as historian Gerda Lerner’s tale of immigration, also balance off the more theoretical sections concerned with complex legal matters, for instance.

Assembled in Women’s America the reader finds excerpts from such “classical” works as Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s “The Female World of Love and Ritual” or Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight as well as recent contributions to women’s history like the highly topical essays on women in the first Iraqi War or the ongoing struggle over abortion (written expressly for this edition). In sum, this new addition of Women’s America: Refocusing the Past again provides the historically interested reader with substantial information on the richness and diversity of American women’s lives and struggles throughout the centuries.