Description
Book SynopsisThe Political Life of Bella Abzug, 19201976: Political Passions, Women's Rights, and Congressional Battles, by Alan H. Levy, marks the first full biography of Bella Abzug. Abzug was one of woman in politics in mid- and late-twentieth-century America. Levy traces the New York City world of Russian-Jewish immigrants into which Abzug was born. He then examines her education through Columbia Law School, her marriage, and her early work both as a labor attorney and as an advocate for many controversial causes, including that of an African-American falsely accused of raping a white woman in Jim Crow Era Mississippi. Levy studies Abzug's work for nuclear disarmament, her activism against the Vietnam War, and her successful bid for Congress in 1970. From there, the biography details the myriad of issues with which Abzug grappled as a Member of Congress from 1971 to 1977, and ends with her close loss to Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1976. A second book, studying the re
Trade ReviewWell researched and carefully written, Levy’s The Political Life of Bella Abzug is a perfect text for students in history, political science, women’s studies, gender studies, and American studies. Graduate students will find rich sources to mine and ideas to confirm and challenge. Finally, the lively readability of Levy’s text makes it a book that general readers will enjoy, particularly in the current contentious political climate that is sometimes mistaken as uniquely combative and obstructionist. Politicians in the 1970s and 1980s also played hardball, and as Levy’s work confirms, Abzug played that way too. * Journal of American History *
Alan Levy artfully creates a vivid portrait of Bella Abzug from her birth in the Bronx in 1920 (one month prior to the ratification the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote) to political defeat in 1976, with more to come in a much anticipated sequel. As an advocate for the poor, oppressed minorities, women, blacks, Hispanics, and gays, she had no peer. A page turner, this book reads like a psychological novel that explains the rise and fall of a brilliant if flawed woman. -- Joseph Dorinson, Long Island University, Brooklyn
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Chapter 1. Live and Let Live Chapter 2. World War II, Law School, and Marriage Chapter 3. Working People Chapter 4. An Explosion in My Mind Chapter 5. Back Downtown Chapter 6. She Always Did Her Homework Chapter 7. Go ____ Yourself Chapter 8. These Motherf_____s Chapter 9. Her Eyes Were Murderous Chapter 10. Priscilla Ryan Chapter 11. From Nixon to Ford Chapter 12. The Last Word Chapter 13. A Staggering Work Load: Caring for the District and the Nation Chapter 14. Safe Seat to No Seat Bibliography.
