Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women New Edition

"A beautifully crafted monograph. . . . Highly recommended."--CHOICE

"An elegant historical survey. . . . Sicherman's well-chosen examples . . . make a good case for her argument that reading mattered crucially."--American Historical Review

"An important book for those interested in issues of gender, literacy, or nineteenth-century American life. . . . A fine example of how historical scholarship about these issues can move between specific case studies and generalized trends or patterns."--Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History

"Beautifully written and meticulously researched."--Publishing Research Quartely

"Each chapter in this book could serve as a stand-alone essay for the reader who was looking for resources on these particular women. . . . A valuable resource for understanding Progressive Era women's culture."--Women and Social Movements in the United States

"Great depth of scholarship and insightful analysis. With its wonderful readability it should also appeal to a more general audience, and will contribute to contemporary conversations about reading in a way that helps us avoid uninformed comparisons between reading today and in the past."--SHARP: Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing

"Sicherman's analysis deepens our understanding of the nature of reading itself, exuding some of the very magic that books clearly held for these young women. . . . An extraordinary contribution to the history of the book, to women's history, and to our understanding of reading's power as a cultural resource for change."--Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers

"Sicherman's study of female reading is as inspirational, entertaining, and comforting as the books her subjects pursued and celebrated. This is truly a text to be reckoned with as both a model and resource of the complicated ways that readers make sense of their texts."--Reviews in American History

"The research behind the individual case studies is thorough and rigorous, and the writing style is engaging. . . . A significant contribution to our understanding of the role of books in the lives of young American women of the period under consideration."--Library & Information History