Lorissa Rinehart — Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress - with Cynthia Richie Terrell

The first major biography of Jeannette Rankin, a groundbreaking suffragist, activist, and the first American woman to hold federal office.“Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to a higher honor and loyalty.”—President John F. Kennedy on Jeannette RankinBorn on a Montana ranch in 1880, Jeannette Rankin knew how to ride a horse, make a fire, and read the sky for weather. But, most of all, she knew how to talk to people and unite them around a shared vision for America. It was this rare skill that led her to become the first woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. As her first act, Rankin put forth the legislation that would become the Nineteenth Amendment. During her two terms, beginning in 1917 and in 1941, she introduced and lobbied for legislation strengthening women’s rights, protecting workers, supporting democratic electoral reform, and promoting peace through disarmament. As Congress’s fiercest pacifist, she used her vote to oppose the declaration of war against the German Empire in 1917 and the Japanese Empire in 1941, holding fast to her belief that “you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” A suffragist, peace activist, workers’ rights advocate, and champion of democratic reform who ran as a Republican, Rankin remained ever faithful to her beliefs, no matter the price she had to pay personally. Despite overcoming the entrenched boys’ club of oligarchic capitalists and career politicians to make enormous strides for women in politics, Rankin has been largely overlooked. In Winning the Earthquake, Lorissa Rinehart expertly recovers the compelling history behind this singular American hero, bringing her story back to life.Lorissa Rinehart is a women’s historian, author, and speaker who brings the past to life with fresh urgency. Her work dives into the powerful crossroads of women’s history, politics, and war, uncovering the stories that have too often been left out of the spotlight. She’s the author of First to the Front and Winning the Earthquake. Each week on her Substack and podcast, The Female Body Politic, Lorissa unpacks today’s headlines through the lens of 250 years of women’s political power in America. She holds an MA in Experimental Humanities from NYU and a BA in Literature from UC Santa Cruz, and is passionate about making history feel prescient, inclusive, and impossible to ignore.Rinehart is in conversation with Cynthia Richie Terrell, the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen and an outspoken advocate for institutional reforms to advance women’s representation and leadership in the United States. Terrell and her husband Rob Richie helped to found FairVote - a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a more representative democracy. Terrell has worked on projects related to women's representation, democracy, and voting system reform in the United States and has worked to help parliamentarians around the globe meet UN goals for women’s representation and leadership.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250353047?ic_referral=AeCrAbYyGmC5h43-T0Q_nuwva03TQopHravwjFvvpJMwMy8NifiriTZVNv0gP0OQ1VcokQzgjkLC-KXLpRnwWVt7KPA1dAHfuIkzSHtQ_4b21CBCOU4kpv_nAm28cY1Nd5k8UiI