Rebecca Edwards is Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College.
Review
"[An] extraordinary achievement....In clear and concise prose, Edwards has transformed the historiographical
landscape of nineteenth-century American politics."
--Reviews in American History
"A stunning entry in the historical scholarship currently revisioning the politics of the Gilded Age from
a gendered perspective....Worthy of serious attention by specialists in both political history and women's history."
--Journal of American History
"Important because of its implications for women's studies, politics, and numerous reform movements (including
women's suffrage)."
--Choice
Oxford University Press Web Site, May, 2000
Summary
Angels in the Machinery offers a sweeping analysis of the centrality of gender to politics in the United States
from the days of the Whigs to the early twentieth century. Author Rebecca Edwards shows that women in the U.S.
participated actively and influentially as Republicans, Democrats, and leaders of third-party movements like Prohibitionism
and Populism--decades before they won the right to vote--and in the process managed to transform forever the ideology
of American party politics. Using cartoons, speeches, party platforms, news accounts, and campaign memorabilia,
she offers a compelling explanation of why family values, women's political activities, and even candidates' sex
lives remain hot-button issues in politics to this day.
Establishes the centrality of gender in American party politics
