Review: Knight, Citizen
The New York Review of Books recently praised Louise W. Knight's Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. From the review by Alan Ryan: "[Citizen] is enviably well-written and deeply engrossing, and a considerable addition to the literature, not just on an extraordinary woman, but on an extraordinary epoch.… Louise Knight has a particular talent for writing as though she knows at any point in the narrative no more than her heroine does of what is about to befall her next; it is a technique that suits her subject perfectly."
Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This masterful biography reveals her early development as a political activist and social philosopher in lively detail and with deep appreciation for motive and character. In Citizen, we observe the powerful mind of a woman encountering the radical ideas of her age, most notably the ever-changing meanings of democracy.
Read an excerpt.