The seventeen essays reprinted in this anthology address the ways in which western women have experienced the twentieth century. These writings go beyond the standard categorizations of gender, class, race, and ethnicity by providing a deeper understanding of women and distribution of power through examinations of generations, family and career, religion, sexual orientation, geography, and political preferences. The analysis that emerges is of an increasingly complex mix of experiences, some continuous from the nineteenth century and others unique to modernity, but all powerfully shaping how women lived in the West during the past century.

This collection is arranged around five themes: politics and power; women and mobility; staying on the land; uncovering women's voices; and reshaping cultural images and ideas. The individual contributors are a virtual "Who's Who" in the field of women's, ethnic, and gender studies: Karen Anderson (University of Arizona, Tucson), Antonia Castaneda (St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas), Virginia Scharff (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque), Paul R. Spickard (University of California, Santa Barbara), Xiaojian Zhao (University of California, Santa Barbara), Norma Chinchilla (University of California, Long Beach), Nora Hamilton (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), Sherry L. Smith (Southern Methodist University, Dallas), Carol Wolfe Konek (Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas), Emily Honig (University of California, Santa Cruz), Dolores Delgado Bernal, Debra A. Castillo (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York), Maria Gudelia Rangel Gomez, Bonnie Delgado (Cornell University, Ithaca), Mary Murphy, Laura Jane Moore, Valerie Matsumoto, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (Ohio State University, Columbus), and the volume editor Sandra Schackel (Boise State University, Boise, Idaho).