Long before the N.R.A. and mass shootings at schools and a country riven by a debate over what “the right to bear arms” means in today’s society, the men who invented guns were hailed as visionaries whose names still resonate today as pioneers: Winchester, Remington, Colt, Wesson. John Bainbridge Jr. does a brilliant job of bringing to life these men and the 19th-century times in which they flourished, making the point along the way that not only did they change warfare but they shaped American industry as well. By both fluke and design, these individuals created a gun culture that is now deeply ingrained in the American psyche and (mostly) got very rich doing so. It is not their fault that what began for many of them as romantic adventure has become a nightmare for so many of us.
Revolutions often begin in unlikely places, and Joanna Scutts, with verve and a historian’s eye, captures the moment that gave birth to modern feminism. The place was a restaurant called Polly’s in Greenwich Village, the year was 1912, and the group was called Heterodoxy, gathering artists, social workers, journalists, lawyers, and scientists to hash out how to achieve gender equality. Were there arguments? Of course. Love affairs? Naturally. And there was also a lot of fun. No records of the meetings were kept, to allow folks to speak their mind, which makes Scutts’s achievement in piecing together Heterodoxy and its impact even more remarkable. Hotbedis its own landmark of a struggle that persists today, whether it be about abortion or sexual harassment or workplace inequities.
