Bella Abzug
How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against War and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along the Way
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am--and this ought to made very clear--I am a very serious woman."
For more than fifty years, Bella Abzug championed the powerless and disenfranchised, as an activist, congresswoman, and leader in every major social initiative of her time—from Zionism and labor in the 40s to the ban-the-bomb efforts in the 50s, to civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements of the 60s, to the women's movement in the 70s and 80s, to enviromnemtal awareness and economic equality in the 90s. Her political idealism never waning, Abzug gave her final public speech before the U.N. in March 1998, just a few weeks before her death. Presented in the voices of both friends and foes, of those who knew, fought with, revered, and struggled alongside her, this oral biography will be the first comprehensive account of a woman who was one of our most influential leaders.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Member of Congress and civil rights, antiwar and feminist activist, Bella Abzug (1920 1998) was one of the 20th century's greatest progressive leaders. Since she left only an unfinished memoir, two friends and colleagues (Levine wrote Inventing the Rest of Our Lives and Thom Inside Ms.) have stitched together an "oral biography" of excerpts from Abzug's own writing as well as snippets of interviews with dozens of people, from her high school gym teacher to Jimmy Carter and Roe v. Wade attorney Sarah Weddington. Edward Kennedy recalls working with Abzug on the Freedom of Information Act, and Shirley MacLaine tells about Abzug accompanying her to a channeling session. Abzug emerges as a determined activist and savvy legislator, but prickly; the barrage of admiration is punctuated with occasional barbs: Ed Koch cites one of Abzug's two fellow congresswomen, Shirley Chisholm, as saying, "Oh, that woman has no class.... That woman is so vulgar." Historians and Abzug devotees will be thankful for Levine and Thom's labors, but the lack of narrative flow with paragraph after choppy paragraph of recollections from luminaries leaves one wishing for a more unified, coherent biography.
