The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 1920–1976

Political Passions, Women's Rights, and Congressional Battles

Alan H. Levy

The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 1920–1976: Political Passions, Women’s Rights, and Congressional Battles, by Alan H. Levy, marks the first full biography of Bella Abzug. Abzug was one of woman in politics in mid- and late-twentieth-century America. Levy traces the New York City world of Russian-Jewish immigrants into which Abzug was born. He then examines her education through Columbia Law School, her marriage, and her early work both as a labor attorney and as an advocate for many controversial causes, including that of an African-American falsely accused of raping a white woman in Jim Crow Era Mississippi. Levy studies Abzug’s work for nuclear disarmament, her activism against the Vietnam War, and her successful bid for Congress in 1970. From there, the biography details the myriad of issues with which Abzug grappled as a Member of Congress from 1971 to 1977, and ends with her close loss to Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1976. A second book, studying the rest of Abzug’s life from 1976 to 1998, is to follow.

Lexington Books

Pages: 294 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-0-7391-8164-5 • Hardback • October 2013 • $143.00 • (£110.00)

978-1-4985-3013-2 • Paperback • October 2015 • $62.99 • (£48.00)

978-0-7391-8165-2 • eBook • October 2013 • $59.50 • (£46.00)

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Political, Biography & Autobiography / Historical, Biography & Autobiography / Women, Political Science / Civil Rights, History / Women

The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 1920–1976

Political Passions, Women's Rights, and Congressional Battles

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 1920–1976: Political Passions, Women’s Rights, and Congressional Battles, by Alan H. Levy, marks the first full biography of Bella Abzug. Abzug was one of woman in politics in mid- and late-twentieth-century America. Levy traces the New York City world of Russian-Jewish immigrants into which Abzug was born. He then examines her education through Columbia Law School, her marriage, and her early work both as a labor attorney and as an advocate for many controversial causes, including that of an African-American falsely accused of raping a white woman in Jim Crow Era Mississippi. Levy studies Abzug’s work for nuclear disarmament, her activism against the Vietnam War, and her successful bid for Congress in 1970. From there, the biography details the myriad of issues with which Abzug grappled as a Member of Congress from 1971 to 1977, and ends with her close loss to Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1976. A second book, studying the rest of Abzug’s life from 1976 to 1998, is to follow.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 294 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-0-7391-8164-5 • Hardback • October 2013 • $143.00 • (£110.00)

978-1-4985-3013-2 • Paperback • October 2015 • $62.99 • (£48.00)

978-0-7391-8165-2 • eBook • October 2013 • $59.50 • (£46.00)

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Political, Biography & Autobiography / Historical, Biography & Autobiography / Women, Political Science / Civil Rights, History / Women

Author

Alan H. Levy is professor of American history at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania where he has taught modern American history for 30 years.

Table of Contents

Introduction.
Chapter 1. Live and Let Live
Chapter 2. World War II, Law School, and Marriage
Chapter 3. Working People
Chapter 4. An Explosion in My Mind
Chapter 5. Back Downtown
Chapter 6. She Always Did Her Homework
Chapter 7. Go ____ Yourself
Chapter 8. These Motherf_____s
Chapter 9. Her Eyes Were Murderous
Chapter 10. Priscilla Ryan
Chapter 11. From Nixon to Ford
Chapter 12. The Last Word
Chapter 13. A Staggering Work Load: Caring for the District and the Nation
Chapter 14. Safe Seat to No Seat
Bibliography.

Reviews

Well researched and carefully written, Levy’s The Political Life of Bella Abzug is a perfect text for students in history, political science, women’s studies, gender studies, and American studies. Graduate students will find rich sources to mine and ideas to confirm and challenge. Finally, the lively readability of Levy’s text makes it a book that general readers will enjoy, particularly in the current contentious political climate that is sometimes mistaken as uniquely combative and obstructionist. Politicians in the 1970s and 1980s also played hardball, and as Levy’s work confirms, Abzug played that way too.
— Journal of American History

Alan Levy artfully creates a vivid portrait of Bella Abzug from her birth in the Bronx in 1920 (one month prior to the ratification the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote) to political defeat in 1976, with more to come in a much anticipated sequel. As an advocate for the poor, oppressed minorities, women, blacks, Hispanics, and gays, she had no peer. A page turner, this book reads like a psychological novel that explains the rise and fall of a brilliant if flawed woman.
— Joseph Dorinson, Long Island University, Brooklyn