After the Vote

Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship Elisabeth Israels Perry explodes traditional assumptions that once they had the vote, American women settled passively into voting as their husbands and fathers had done. Her formidable research and vivid prose reveal that in the nation's largest city, from Greenwich Village to Harlem, women civic activists set their sights on corrupt judges, policemen, and politicians. Aligned with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, they fought to reshape courts and prisons, to rehabilitate sex workers and to punish pimps, to modernize city government and to sustain progressive agendas. Their vision, practical ideas, and sophisticated political skills continue to resonate in our own time.

Alice Kessler-Harris, author of Women Have Always Worked: A Concise History This is quite simply a wonderful book. It asks what happened to the powerful women who emerged from the women's suffrage movement. And it brilliantly answers the question by tracing the lives and activities of two generations of female political activists who altered New York City's government forever. Filled with illuminating detail, this is a must read for anyone interested in the future of women in politics.

Karen Pastorello, Tompkins Cortland Community College (SUNY), Gotham Center for New York City History With keen insight, Perry illuminates the origins of the broader fight for women's unity and equality.

Elisabeth Israels Perry is professor emeritus of history and women's and gender studies at Saint Louis University. She has published extensively on American women's history, and is the author of Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith, a biography of her grandmother and one of the original "Women of the La Guardia Administration."