The Jane Addams Reader

Jane Addams was a prolific and elegant writer. Her twelve books consist largely of published essays, but to appreciate her life work one must also read her previously uncollected speeches and editorials. This artfully compiled collection begins with Addams's youthful Junior Class Oration on women as Breadgivers, features thoughtful examinations of topics as diverse as Tolstoy and Gandhi and The Public School and the Immigrant Child, and even includes popular essays on The Subtle Problems of Charity, from The Atlantic Monthly, and Need a Woman Over Fifty Feel Old? from Ladies' Home Journal. Along with the writings themselves, Elshtain's insightful commentary offers powerful evidence of Addams's remarkable ability to frame social problems in an ethical context, her unwillingness to succumb to ideological dogma, her political courage, and her lifelong devotion to civic and moral life.

Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 12/01/2001
Pages: 528
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.77lbs
Size: 9.04h x 6.00w x 1.36d
ISBN: 9780465019151

Review Citation(s):
Women's Review of Books 06/01/2002 pg. 16
New York Times 01/05/2003 pg. 16

About the Author
Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at The University of Chicago. She is the author of over four hundred essays in scholarly journals and journals of civic opinion, and some one hundred and seventy five book reviews, and was a contributing editor at the New Republic.

Among her books are Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy (Basic, 2001), Just War Against Terror (Basic, 2003) and Democracy on Trial (Basic, 1995). She lives in Nashville, Tennessee and Chicago, Illinois.