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No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith
No Place for a Woman is the first biography to analyze Margaret Chase Smith’s life and times by using politics and gender as the lens through which we can understand this Maine senator’s impact on American politics and American women. Sherman’s research is based upon more than one hundred hours of personal interviews with Senator Smith, and extensive research in primary and government documents, including those from the holdings of the Margaret Chase Smith Library.
316 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
research
July 16, 2021⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I'm going to be labelling the books I'm using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.
September 17, 2017
I really enjoyed the early part of the book and reading through Chase's early life, and career. I got bogged down though as the book went through her Senate career. Good biography, but a bit dry at times.
July 1, 2009
When I was a youngster, my grandmother decided that my cousins and I needed to know all the US Senators. So she started us on a project to collect autographed photographs of all the Senators. This was circa late 1950s. One of those Senators was Senator Smith. As I was only about 11 at the time I could have cared less who Ms Chase was. Now as an adult with an interest in current and past political history and after hearing an NPR radio report about her, I decided to find out more about her political career.
Today you hear so much about women in politics but not much about the ladies who were the pioneers. She was first the Congresswoman from Maine and later the Senator. She was in Congress during 5 presidencies. It was intriguing to learn how much Congress was a
"good ol boy" system and how Ms Smith had to show she could play with the big boys but still retain her femininity. It was an interesting time in political history and hers was an interesting story.
Today you hear so much about women in politics but not much about the ladies who were the pioneers. She was first the Congresswoman from Maine and later the Senator. She was in Congress during 5 presidencies. It was intriguing to learn how much Congress was a
"good ol boy" system and how Ms Smith had to show she could play with the big boys but still retain her femininity. It was an interesting time in political history and hers was an interesting story.
October 19, 2007
A quick look at the life of the nation's first independently elected female senator.
Want to read
October 30, 2008heard about this on NPR -- seems like an interesting read.
April 22, 2017
Margaret Chase Smith was the kind of woman we don't celebrate much anymore. Nowadays, there is enormous pressure for people to play up their victimhood or ways they were mistreated, demanding they be remedied. Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman elected to the Senate in her own right and an influential titan during her time, had a different approach. She suffered all of the slings and arrows of breaking up what was literally a boys club at the time, and never complained about it. She's fight, fiercely, but she'd also work to show her colleagues, and the American people, she demanded, nor required, special treatment, or even fair treatment. She'd beat them at their own game, and often, she did.
It's said that all political careers end in failure. In a certain sense, there is truth to that. Eventually, the other side gains power, you lose an election to your bitter enemy, etc. However, the truly successful politician sets a new mold for others to follow, even in the light of defeats. Smith lost her bid for a 5th term, in 1972 no less when her fellow Republican Nixon (although there was no love lost between them) was winning 49 states. But her model of a stiff-necked moderate, hawkish but responsible, inspired generations of Maine politicians. Current Senator Susan Collins and former Senator Olympia Snowe (both from Maine) both modeled themselves after Smith and, together, have won 6 terms in the Senate and 8 in the House of Representatives, usually by crushing margins, even as the state has shifted back and forth politically.
Given Smith's insistence that she was not a feminist, in fact she was venomously against modern breeds of feminists, and continually insisted she wanted to be a good Senator, not a good woman Senator, it is a bit odd that Sherman chooses to focus as much as she does on Smith's gender and what it meant and what it cost her in terms of indignities. But given the fact she was the first woman elected in her own right to the Senate, and it was all too often a factor in her career, it is perhaps inevitable. Either way, she's a woman well worth learning about for anyone interested in seeing how politics works, nationally and locally, and how a truly exceptional person can make a big difference.
It's said that all political careers end in failure. In a certain sense, there is truth to that. Eventually, the other side gains power, you lose an election to your bitter enemy, etc. However, the truly successful politician sets a new mold for others to follow, even in the light of defeats. Smith lost her bid for a 5th term, in 1972 no less when her fellow Republican Nixon (although there was no love lost between them) was winning 49 states. But her model of a stiff-necked moderate, hawkish but responsible, inspired generations of Maine politicians. Current Senator Susan Collins and former Senator Olympia Snowe (both from Maine) both modeled themselves after Smith and, together, have won 6 terms in the Senate and 8 in the House of Representatives, usually by crushing margins, even as the state has shifted back and forth politically.
Given Smith's insistence that she was not a feminist, in fact she was venomously against modern breeds of feminists, and continually insisted she wanted to be a good Senator, not a good woman Senator, it is a bit odd that Sherman chooses to focus as much as she does on Smith's gender and what it meant and what it cost her in terms of indignities. But given the fact she was the first woman elected in her own right to the Senate, and it was all too often a factor in her career, it is perhaps inevitable. Either way, she's a woman well worth learning about for anyone interested in seeing how politics works, nationally and locally, and how a truly exceptional person can make a big difference.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews