Her Brilliant Career

Description:

Journalist Rachel Cooke goes back in time to offer an entertaining and iconoclastic look at ten women in the 1950s--pioneers whose professional careers and complicated private lives helped to create the opportunities available to today's women. These intrepid and ambitious individuals--among them a film director, a cook, an architect, an editor, an archaeologist, and a race car driver--left the house, discovered the bliss of work, and ushered in the era of the working woman Daring and independent, these remarkable unsung heroines--whose obscurity makes their accomplishments all the more astonishing and relevant--loved passionately, challenged men's control, made their own mistakes, and took life on their own terms, breaking new ground and offering inspiration. Their individual portraits form a landscape of 1950s culture, and of women's unique--and rapidly evolving--role. Before there could be a Danica Patrick, there had to be a Sheila van Damm; before there was Barbara Walters, there was Nancy Spain; before Kathryn Bigelow came Muriel Box. The pioneers of Her Brilliant Career forever changed the fabric of culture, society, and the workforce. This is the Fifties retold: vivid, surprising and, most of all, modern.--From publisher description.

subjects: Women,  Nineteen fifties,  History,  Women, history,  Twentieth century

People: Rose Heilbron (1914-2005),  Joan Werner Laurie,  Alison Smithson,  Patience Gray,  Betty E. Box (1915-1999),  Sheila Van Damm,  Muriel Box (1905-1991),  Jacquetta Hawkes (1910-1996),  Nancy Spain (1917-1964),  Margery Fish

Times: 20th century