Book : The Hello Girls America’s First Women Soldiers -...

-Titulo Original : The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers

-Fabricante :

Harvard University Press

-Descripcion Original:

In 1918, the U.S. Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France at General Pershing’s explicit request. They were masters of the latest technology: the telephone switchboard. While suffragettes picketed the White House and President Wilson struggled to persuade a segregationist Congress to give women of all races the vote, these courageous young women swore the army oath and settled into their new roles. Elizabeth Cobbs reveals the challenges they faced in a war zone where male soldiers wooed, mocked, and ultimately celebrated them.The army discharged the last Hello Girls in 1920, the year Congress ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. When they sailed home, they were unexpectedly dismissed without veterans’ benefits and began a sixty-year battle that a handful of survivors carried to triumph in 1979.“What an eye-opener! Cobbs unearths the original letters and diaries of these forgotten heroines and weaves them into a fascinating narrative with energy and zest.” Cokie Roberts, author of Capital Dames“This engaging history crackles with admiration for the women who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the First World War, becoming the country’s first female soldiers.” New Yorker“Utterly delightful… Cobbs very adroitly weaves the story of the Signal Corps into that larger story of American women fighting for the right to vote, but it’s the warm, fascinating job she does bringing her cast…to life that gives this book its memorable charisma… This terrific book pays them a long-warranted tribute.” Christian Science Monitor“Cobbs is particularly good at spotlighting how closely the service of military women like the Hello Girls was tied to the success of the suffrage movement.” NPR Review “This engaging history crackles with admiration for the women who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the First World War, becoming the country’s first female soldiers. Operating switchboards in France, they juggled constantly shifting lists of codes and connections, worked fast amid artillery blasts, and mastered the ‘genteel diplomacy’ needed to communicate with officials in French as well as English. Their technical skill was matched by what one woman called the ‘great, unquenchable, patriotic desire to do my bit.’ Cobbs intercuts front-line activities with political battles on the home front: the women returned from victory to an America that did not yet grant them the right to vote.” New Yorker “Utterly delightful… It’s a little-known side-story of the war, but it’s not a little story: In Cobbs’s skillful handling, it becomes a big, multilayered tale of courage and long-delayed justice… Cobbs very adroitly weaves the story of the Signal Corps into that larger story of American women fighting for the right to vote, but it’s the warm, fascinating job she does bringing her cast of The Hello Girls to life that gives this book its memorable charisma… [These women] fought for years to gain the recognition they deserved as the forerunners of all women serving in the U.S. armed forces. This terrific book pays them a long-warranted tribute.” Steve Donoghue , Christian Science Monitor “In the crisply written The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers, Elizabeth Cobbs details exactly what was asked of these women during the war, and reveals, with an authoritative, dispassionate, this-was-some-self-evident-nonsense lucidity, the dismaying extent to which their country failed them when it was over… Smartly, she also walks us through the sundry and simultaneous technical demands of switchboard operating, noting that women could connect five calls in the time it took a man to complete one. Cobbs is particularly good at spotlighting how closely the service of military women like the Hello Girls was tied to the success of the suffrage movement.” Glen Weldon , NPR Books “Elizabeth Cobbs draws on a range of official documents, as well as letters and diaries, to tell the fascinating story of the forgo