As a class, women's history books tend to be serious. And gray. Very gray. If they are illustrated at all, they feature photos of Susan B. Anthony and her grim-faced contemporaries.
But now, suddenly, come four new histories that are art books, too. They are lush. They celebrate women's beauty and grace as well as their strength. They honor political leaders like Marian Wright Edelman, Indira Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt - but also Anna Pavlova, Joan Baez, Jackie Kennedy and Greta Garbo.Of the four, "Legends" is the prettiest of the pretties. "Legends" has a photo of Audrey Hepburn on the cover. She wears a black turtleneck and stands against a black backdrop. All you see is her gorgeous face and one palm, up-lifted, as if to turn aside your adoration.
Not only are the photos artistic, but so is the text in this volume published by New World Library ($29.95; 128 pages). Anjelica Huston wrote the introduction. Other famous writers wrote one-page essays to accompany the photos.
You get Diane Johnson describing Hepburn (a "gazelle of an actress") and Mary Jo Salter managing, in only five paragraphs, to sum up the mystery of Helen Keller. The best essay in this collection of quite good essays happens to be by Elizabeth Hardwick on Billie Holiday.
Hardwick recalls, "She was fat the first time we saw her, large, brilliantly beautiful, fat. She seemed for this moment that never again returned to be almost a matron, someone real and sensible who carried money to the bank, signed papers, had curtains made to match, dresses hung and shoes in pairs, gold and silver, black and white, ready. What a strange, betraying apparition that was, madness, because never was any woman less a wife or mother, less attached; not even a daughter could she easily appear to be. Little called to mind the pitiful sweetness of a young girl. No, she was glittering, somber, and solitary, although of course never alone, never. Stately, sinister, and absolutely determined."
The genius of the next book, "Generations of Women," is also apparent in photos and in text. ("Generations of Women: In Their Own Words," with photographs and interviews by Mariana Cook; Chronicle Books; $27.50; 108 pages.)
There are a few celebrities included in this collection - Whoopi Goldberg is on the cover - but mostly these are interviews and photos of regular women.
In "Generations," moms and daughters and grandmoms explain where they fit in their families. Mariana Cook keeps the interviews short. Still, they are telling. One of the best is with the Littleton/Behlen family of Homewood, Ill. Though the women in the family describe themselves as independent, the intergenerational patterns are obvious to the reader, obvious and amusing.
First the 69-year-old grandmother, Eleanor, talks about how much her rebellious granddaughter reminds her of her daughter Sophie. Then we have Sophie, 40, who has only recently stopped rebelling against her mother.
Sophie describes Eleanor as a dutiful mother, one who oversaw all the details. Sophie describes herself as the complete opposite. She says, "I have allowed my daughters space, and I am sure that I give them too much power because I felt so powerless as a child."
And finally, we hear from Sophie's 10- and 12-year-old daughters, who say their mom and grandma are a lot alike. "They are both just a little bit picky and negative, and then they're fun sometimes, too." And if they've been allowed power and space, the kids don't notice it. The oldest girl says that if she had a choice, she'd want a less authoritarian mom. "I need more freedom."
In the photo, the 10-year-old looks exactly like her grandmother. There is something dear about seeing the same chin and eyes, as well as the same attitudes, being passed along.
"Mrs. Kennedy Goes Abroad," is the name of the next book. (It's by Jacqueline Duheme; Artisan; 63 pages; $18.95.) But the picture on the cover shows Jackie Kennedy coming home. She's riding a flying carpet. She's accompanied by an elephant and two tiger cubs. She's about ready to land in the Rose Garden. And Jack Kennedy and her two tiny children are there to greet her - jumping up and down.
The picture is a watercolor, a fantasy from an innocent time. The artist, Jacqueline Duheme, is a Frenchwoman who charmed Jackie with the scenes she painted of President and Mrs. Kennedy's 1961 trip to Paris.
The two Jacquelines became friends then, on the Kennedys first official tour. So Duheme was invited along when Mrs. Kennedy went to Rome, to India and to Buckingham Palace to lunch with the Queen. The reproductions of those little watercolors make a sweet picture book.
In his introduction, John Kenneth Galbraith describes Mrs. Kennedy's world view. Let other diplomats pretend these trips were about such weighty matters as international relations. Mrs. Kennedy went abroad to be entertaining and entertained.
She had fun. Galbraith says, "She was not at all under the impression that she was changing the course of history; the thought would have amused her." This picture book perfectly captures the spirit with which Mrs. Kennedy approached her travels and her role as First Lady.
And finally, "Women of Hope" is a book for young readers, published by Scholastic Press. ($16.95; 30 pages) The photos are courtesy of Bread and Roses, a cultural project of the National Health and Human Services Employees Union, AFL-CIO 1199.
The members of this union are, for the most part, women of color. They rarely see themselves reflected in the popular media, according to the project director, Moe Foner. The Bread and Roses project commissioned posters of minority women - from astronauts to actresses. Later, Joyce Hansen was hired to write biographies of 13 of them. Hence the book.
One of the most beautiful photos and stories is of Septima Poinsette Clark. She was born in 1898 in South Carolina and became principal and teacher in a two-room school. In 1956, when she refused to give up her membership in the NAACP, the state revoked her teaching certificate.
So she signed on with Martin Luther King Jr. and ran citizenship schools, known as Freedom Schools, throughout the South. She helped thousands of her people exercise their right to vote.
Hansen tells Clark's story in a simple, straightforward style. After long legal battles, Clark finally received her back wages as a teacher. Clark lived to be 89 years old. She lived long enough to be honored as one of the state's outstanding citizens. She lived long enough to be photographed, artistically, and to be included in the next generation of women's history books.