New Books, New Lives: Jewish Immigrant Women, Reading and Identity

Barbara Sicherman writes about women, privileged and not, real (Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells, Edith and Alice Hamilton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman) and imagined (Jo March, Marjorie Morningstar). Her recent book, "Well-Read Lives" tells moving stories of how young women born in Victorian times lost--and found--themselves in books and worked out a life purpose around them. By discovering the meaning of reading to women in the past, today's readers can gain insight into their own lives. A professor emerita at Trinity College, the author lives in West Hartford, Conn. with her Maine Coon cat, Sascha.