THE COLOR OF TIME

A rousing celebration of women’s achievements.

British historian, journalist, and TV presenter Jones teams up with Brazilian artist Amaral to create a brisk, vibrantly illustrated panorama of women during a century of profound change. Each chapter features women from around the world who have made significant contributions in areas such as sports (including boxing, fencing, marathon dancing, and chess), education, the arts, entertainment, science, research, activism, and business. Some are unquestionably famous—Marilyn Monroe, Queen Victoria, Josephine Baker, Amelia Earhart, Margaret Mead—but readers are likely to find many new discoveries. There’s 1950s tennis star Althea Gibson, the first Black woman to win a Grand Slam title; pioneering balloonist Marie Marvingt, who also happened to be a mountain climber and adventurer; trapeze artist Maud Wagner, known as “The Tattooed Lady”; and Vesta Tilley, an acclaimed entertainer who, in the 1890s, was “the highest-earning woman in Britain: a singing, dancing, cross-dressing phenomenon whose songs were familiar to an entire generation.” Women were on the move as pilots and taxi, bus, and train drivers; they founded their own businesses (Coco Chanel, Helena Rubinstein, and German toy maker Käthe Kruse, among many others). Mary Baker Eddy created a religion, Christian Science. In 1903, Maggie Lena Walker overcame Jim Crow laws to become the founding president of the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia. Women also fought against Fascists in the Italian resistance, served in guerrilla militias in Vietnam, and joined Mao’s People’s Liberation Army. Martha Gellhorn and Nellie Bly were pathbreaking journalists. Some women were queens (Isabella II of Spain, Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani); others, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Evita Peron, became powerful because of the men they married. Although the biographical sketches of each woman are brief, they are rich in detail, and Amaral’s deeply saturated colorized images bring to life a prolific number of portraits, snapshots, and historical photographs. The author’s capacious selection unsurprisingly omits many notable women, but the included profiles make for entertaining reading.

A fresh contribution to women’s history.