I’ve heard from a number of you that you enjoyed the stories of women foreign correspondents that I posted over the last two months.  Some of you shared your own experiences as journalists in the 1970s and 1980s–remarkably similar to those of women reporters in the 1930s and 1940s, alas.  More than one of you suggested that any one of the women whose stories I shared would be worth a book in her own right.*. Since so many of you were interested, I think it is time to share a book that I think many of you will enjoy.

Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism by Brooke Kroeger is not an encyclopedic listing of women journalists over the last 180 years.** Instead, it is, using her own word,  a representative account of women who held meaningful positions in American newsrooms, beginning with Margaret Fuller in the 1840s and ending with the reporters who launched the #MeToo movement with their investigative reporting in the early 2020s.  The book is full of intriguing accomplished women, many of whom are largely forgotten.  More importantly, it traces what Kroeger describes as a recurring theme that continues into the modern day of “progress followed by setback.”

The book is fascinating, occasionally infuriating (because of the subject, not because of Kroeger’s writing), and overall a delight to read. If you’re interested in women’s history, journalism or, obviously, women journalists, this one’s for you.

*That might be true, but I won’t be the one writing those books.  Even if the sources exist, which may not be the case, I’m ready to move on from journalists to something else.  I don’t know what, but I most likely will be writing about a tough broad whom we need to know more about.

**And a good thing, too.  Such books, whether they look at women journalists or women warriors, are useful, but not much fun to read.