Published in 2018
528 pages
Andrea Barnet is the author of Visionary Women: How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall and Alice Waters Changed Our World, a finalist for the 2019 PEN/ Bograd Weld Award for Biography and one of Booklist’s four “2018 Editors’ choice for biography” selections. Her previous book, All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930 was a nonfiction finalist for the 2004 Lambda Literary Awards. She was a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review for twenty-five years, where she wrote primary on the arts and culture. Her journalism has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the New York Times, Elle, Harpers Bazaar and The Toronto Glove and Mail, among other publications. She splits her time between the Hudson Valley and New York City, where she lives with her husband, the painter Kit White.
What is this book about?
A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography
Four influential women we thought we knew well—Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters—and how they spearheaded the modern progressive movement
This is the story of four visionaries who profoundly shaped the world we live in today. Together, these women—linked not by friendship or field, but by their choice to break with convention—showed what one person speaking truth to power can do. Jane Jacobs fought for livable cities and strong communities; Rachel Carson warned us about poisoning the environment; Jane Goodall demonstrated the indelible kinship between humans and animals; and Alice Waters urged us to reconsider what and how we eat.
With a keen eye for historical detail, Andrea Barnet traces the arc of each woman’s career and explores how their work collectively changed the course of history. While they hailed from different generations, Carson, Jacobs, Goodall, and Waters found their voices in the early sixties. At a time of enormous upheaval, all four stood as bulwarks against 1950s corporate culture and its war on nature. Consummate outsiders, each prevailed against powerful and mostly male adversaries while also anticipating the disaffections of the emerging counterculture.
All told, their efforts ignited a transformative progressive movement while offering people a new way to think about the world and a more positive way of living in it.
