Alice Hamilton – A Life in Letters (Paper) - Softcover

Sicherman, B

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674015541 ISBN 13: 9780674015548

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1987

Synopsis

She was first considered "subversive" during World War I, yet she lived to protest our involvement in Vietnam. She was America's foremost industrial toxicologist, a pioneer in medicine and in social reform, long-time resident of Hull House, pacifist and civil libertarian. She was Edith Hamilton's sister, and the first woman on the faculty of Harvard, though she retired--an assistant professor in the school of public health--ten years before women medical students were admitted. This legendary figure now comes to life in an integrated work of biography and letters. A keen observer and an extraordinarily complex woman, Alice Hamilton left a rich correspondence, spanning the period from 1888 to 1965, that forms a journal of her times as well as of her life. The letters document the range of her involvement, from the battle against lead poisoning to debates with Felix Frankfurter over civil liberties. But as Alice Hamilton describes a woman's medical education in the late nineteenth century, her unlikely adventures in city slums, mine shafts, and factories, her work with Jane Addams and the women's peace movement, we also witness the stages of one woman's evolution from self-deprecating girl to leading social advocate. The charming details of her girlhood help us to understand her conflicted need to escape Victorian constraints without violating her own notion of femininity, a dilemma resolved only by a career combining science with service. Beautifully realized works themselves, these letters have been woven by Barbara Sicherman into an exemplary biography that opens a window on the Progressive era.

About this title

Review

Elegant and illuminating... A book to be read and reread, and pondered for all that it can teach.

One of the most fulfilling books about the life and work of a physician that I have read in many a year... A beautiful piece of scholarship and a book that is a pleasure to read and to think about.

In our age without heroes, it is both refreshing and valuable to be reminded of heroic lives. Alice Hamilton was such a person. Her rich and varied life, her fortitude and accomplishments, are brought to light in this deeply affecting, beautifully constructed biography.

Brings to life a remarkable woman ... Alice Hamilton, pioneer in industrial medicine and, so to speak, the grandmother of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, was one of that extraordinary first flight of activist women who set about changing the world... A memorable portrait of a woman and an age.

A book which captures and illuminates Hamilton's many-faceted personality and career. It allows us to become acquainted with a complex and changing individual while placing her thoughts and activities within the context of late 19th-century feminist thought... We come away from Alice Hamilton with an enriched sense of the personal and social dilemmas her generation of educated women reformers sought to resolve.

About the Author

Barbara Sicherman is Kenan Professor of American Institutions and Values, Trinity College, and coeditor of Notable American Women: The Modern Period.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674015541
• ISBN 13: 9780674015548
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 488