What you don’t know

Very often in history, there are women whose role is either forgotten or entirely erased. In the past few years, however, we have seen a spate of books written by authors whose purpose is bring to life some of these women. The following books do just that and are worth your consideration. Enjoy!

A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson is a book that will suprise and inspire you. Carole Hopson tells the story of Bessie Coleman, a black woman born into slavery in Texas. One day, Coleman looks up into the sky to see an airplane flying overhead. Right there, in the middle of picking cotton, she decides she will also, not only fly, but learn to pilot a plane. And she does!

Hopson’s interest in Coleman comes from her own desire to have a second career as an airline pilot. She currently pilots a 737 for United Airlines. Her book was an NPR Book of the Day.

Reading this book, The English Chemist, will make you angry. The story is a fictionalized biography of Rosalind Franklin, a British scientist whose work led to the identification of DNA but who was denied recognition at the time.

I was privileged to have dinner with friends at a pub in Cambridge called the Eagle. I was told that it was there, in 1953, that Francis Crick and James Watson burst in to tell everyone that they had discovered the secret of life!! Then I assume they bought everyone a beer. They went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the discovery of DNA. What wasn’t mentioned to me was the role Rosalin Franklin had in the discovery.

When you read this book, you can decide if you think she was overlooked unfairly or simply because her work wasn’t all that important. (If you don’t already know, I will tell you that women in scientific research were treated very badly in those days, if not still.)

Peggy, by Rebecca Godfrey and Leslie Jamison

If you have been to the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, who will have seen some of the many works of art collected by Peggy Guggenheim, the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic, and the neice of Solomon Guggenheim, for whom the museum is named. Young Miss Guggenheim was wild and rich but had a hard time moving past her father’s death. What she loved most was art! She ended up opening a museum in Venice, but not until after she had married, had children and showcased abstract artists in galleries in New York and London. She was perhaps most proud of Jackson Pollock and the role she played in his career. Critics praise not only the substance of the novel itself but the prose of the author Rebecca Godfrey. Godfrey unfortunately died before the book was pubished so Leslie Jamison finished it.