100 Reasons to Check Out This List of Women

High on the scale of human compulsions, somewhere between, say, procreation and interior decorating, is the need to make lists. Lists that rank and celebrate. Lists that reflect achievement and infamy. And as the century wanes to a sliver in the millennial sky, these lists are coming fast and furious, the topics broader and more ambitious. Which is wildly entertaining and distracting, for, as the near-hysterical debate over the American Film Institute’s recent attempt to name the top 100 proved, the only thing one loves more than making such a list is editing one someone else has made.

“Remarkable Women of the Twentieth Century: 100 Portraits of Achievement,” by Kristen Golden and Barbara Findlen (Friedman/Fairfax 1998, $32.50), is and is not such a list. The writers intentionally chose not to use a superlative in their title--hence, they do not claim that these are the most powerful or the most influential or the most famous. Which takes a bit of the edge off any ensuing argument over who was included--”well, if she’s one of the most important women of the 20th century, I’m the Queen of France” is not an appropriate response, even for those with personal issues with Roseanne or Helen Caldicott.

Beyond the refusal to hyperbolize, the authors organized their choices into eight illuminating, yet elastic, chapters. “Amazing Grace,” for example, includes Helen Keller, Coco Chanel, Alice Walker, Maya Lin; “Bright Ideas,” Madam C.J. Walker, Virginia Apgar, Lillian Vernon; and “To Tell the Truth,” Dorothea Lange, Ann Landers, Barbara Jordon and Anita Hill.

Each of these chapters consists of concisely informative biographies and splendid but not sappy photos. The book, about 170 pages excluding bibliography and index, is mercifully free of any breathless editorializing or worshipful introductions. The reason for each woman’s inclusion is made clear, yes, but beyond that, the biographies are content to present the accomplishments and leave them to speak for themselves.

The result is a book serene in tone and design, accessible and informative, a must-have kind of book that is as irresistible to the Saturday afternoon loafer as it undoubtedly will be to countless students in search of a resource for their seemingly endless Significant Figures in History reports. Far from relying on a list of the usual suspects, Golden and Findlen have made their choices with a sense of history, a sense of diversity and a sense of humor. Where else would Jane Addams lie cheek to cheek with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Carry Nation with Madonna, or Mary McLeod Bethune with Princess Diana?

Many of these women are well-known, some are not, but all took up a lot of room, one way or another, in this passing century, and Golden and Findlen have wisely kept the book free of gimmickry or literary fussiness in order to give them that. They’ve also managed to somehow leave room for the Others--the women who are not included in this particular list, but who are peeking through its white space nonetheless.

As the authors make clear in their introduction, they are not attempting to quantify the achievements of women but to shake them loose from the capriciousness of history, to represent through omission as much as through inclusion. They have created a list, and a list cannot encompass the limitless--the majority of the women in these hundred are American; certainly they have counterparts, and counterpoints, elsewhere in the world. And even accepting the fact that this is an American book, still it shimmers with its own shadows. There would be no Helen Keller without Anne Sullivan; why Dorothea Lange and not Anne Morrow Lindbergh or Gertrude Stein rather than Flannery O’Connor? Where are Bessie Smith and Edith Piaf, Angela Davis and Agatha Christie?

See, it’s working already.

For more reviews, read Sunday Book Review.

* Passion Play: Edward Hirsch on how to fall in love with poetry; Carol Muske Dukes on Adrienne Rich’s “Midnight Salvage”; and Richard Howard on Eugenio Montale.