Women: First and Foremost (1997)

Volume One begins and ends with an extended look at the contribution of women to the public health of the United States: it tells the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to attend medical school, and of Alice Hamilton, Emily Dunning, and Esther Lovejoy. Abolitionists are a source of women leaders: the Grimke sisters, Harriet Tubman, Lydia Maria Frances Child, and Maryann Shad Carrie. Special attention goes to Anne Hutchinson's trial and then to writers: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catherine Beecher, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatley, Hannah Adams, Abigail Adams, and Emily Dickinson. Historians comment throughout; Rita Moreno and Dee Wallace-Stone host.