Ocean State Libraries

"For decades starting in the 1950s, Raymond Patriarca ran the New England Mafia out of a storefront in Providence, Rhode Island. By 1980 he was seventy-two years old, and suffering from diabetes and heart disease. One night in December of that year his life intersected with that of Dr. Barbara Roberts, a thirty-six-year old single mother of three, who was the first female cardiologist to practice in Rhode Island. Asked by Raymond's family to check...

A chronicle of five centuries of outstanding women who left their mark on the Ocean State.

Rhode Island proudly claims a long list of remarkable women throughout history, from pioneering education reformers and suffragettes to trailblazing athletes and authors. In the mid-1800s, Sarah Helen Whitman became a prominent female poet and nearly married Edgar Allan Poe. In 1922, Isabelle Ahearn O’Neil became the first woman to hold

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"Change is sometimes sparked by unexpected figures--outsiders whose clarity of vision and strength of purpose can catalyze a revolution. This is the story of four renegades who profoundly shaped the world we live in today. Together, these women--linked not by friendship or field, but by their choice to break with convention--showed what one person speaking truth to power can do. Rachel Carson warned us about poisoning the environment; Jane Jacobs...

"New England has nurtured countless women who shook off the expectations of their gender to forge their own destinies. This book features fifty sites in New England's six states and narrates the lives of historic and contemporary women who lived there"--

Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki warriors in service to the French raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed twenty-seven men, women, and children, and took thirteen captives, including thirty-nine-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant. After a forced march of nearly one hundred...

Born in England and raised by a progressive father, an abolitionist who also believed women were equal to men, Elizabeth Blackwell is famous for becoming America's first woman doctor. But her story is far more complex. Students will be interested to learn that Blackwell was denied the ability to practice medicine, simply because she was a woman. Her insistence on breaking barriers, as well as opening doors for other women, will teach students the...

"Yale University, along with the rest of the Ivy League, kept its gates closed to women until the class of 1969. The reason for letting them in? As an incentive for men to attend. Yale Needs Women is the story of why the most elite schools in the nation refused women for so long, and what the first women to enter those halls faced when they stepped onto campus"--