Elaine Weiss’s new book, The Woman’s Hour, puts excitement into the suffragettes’ fight to win the vote

One of Elaine Weiss’s most remarkable achievements in her new book, The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (Viking, March 2018), is that she has written a historical narrative with the furious urgency of a thriller. Even readers well versed in American history will likely be surprised to learn that the ratification of the 19th Amendment came down to a single vote in the Tennessee state legislature in the summer of 1920. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, giving it the three-fourths total necessary to become law. Had one more representative voted no, women might have had to wait decades longer to get the right to vote.

Read the interview by Wendy Smith, December 11, 2017