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  • Published: 7 January 2020
  • ISBN: 9780425291467
  • Imprint: Puffin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $19.99

Roses and Radicals

The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote



"Women's rights are human rights." The words are relevant today, but they could just as easily have been used by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at Seneca Falls in 1848. Or Susan B. Anthony when she was arrested for voting in 1872. Or Alice Paul when she was imprisoned and tortured for peacefully protesting outside the White House in 1917.

The story of women's suffrage is epic. For over seventy years, heroic women risked their lives for the cause, knowing they likely wouldn't live to cast a vote. At a time when sexism was inherent in daily life, these women (and a few men) created a movement and fought for it passionately until the vote on the 19th amendment was finally called in 1920. It passed without a vote to spare. This under-explored history resonates now more than ever, and will remind readers that ordinary citizens and peaceful protest can effect lasting change.

The United States of America is almost 250 years old, but American women won the right to vote less than a hundred years ago.

And when the controversial nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution-the one granting suffrage to women-was finally ratified in 1920, it passed by a mere one-vote margin.

The amendment only succeeded because a courageous group of women had been relentlessly demanding the right to vote for more than seventy years. The leaders of the suffrage movement are heroes who were fearless in the face of ridicule, arrest, imprisonment, and even torture. Many of them devoted themselves to the cause knowing they wouldn't live to cast a ballot.
The story of women's suffrage is epic, frustrating, and as complex as the women who fought for it. Illustrated with portraits, period cartoons, and other images, Roses and Radicals celebrates this captivating yet overlooked piece of American history and the women who made it happen.

  • Published: 7 January 2020
  • ISBN: 9780425291467
  • Imprint: Puffin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $19.99

Praise for Roses and Radicals

Praise for Roses and Radicals:

*"Lots of young people will find this eye-opening."--Booklist, starred review

*"With the 100th anniversary of the amendment's passage coming up in 2020, the book is very timely."--School Library Connection, starred review

"A conversational tone . . . makes this primer all the more accessible and relevant, as does the observation that, with the proposed Equal Rights Amendment still in limbo, the struggle for women's rights is in no way over."--Publishers Weekly

"Never melodramatic, this is a timely, eye-opening history." --KirkusReviews