"While adeptly covering centuries of women's work, this wise and wide-ranging survey engages big questions about values in private and public life and always keeps in view the range of life-situations among women of various descriptions. It is a treat to have this revised edition."--Nancy F. Cott, author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation
"Distinguished labor historian Alice Kessler-Harris was a pioneer in the history of women's work at home and at the workplace. This re-issue of her 1981 history is still the best short introduction to the topic. Now a new chapter on the recent past provides a pithy - and disturbing - report on women's work today and the impact of right-wing efforts to undo the gains that working women fought for and won in the 1960s and 1970s."--Linda Gordon, author of The Moral Property of Women: The History of Birth Control Politics in America