In a time when women could not vote, hold public office, or teach outside the home, the charismatic Hutchinson wielded remarkable political power. Her unconventional ideas attracted a following of prominent citizens eager for social reform. Charged with heresy and sedition, she defended herself brilliantly, but the court, faced with a perceived threat to public order, banished her for behaving in a manner "not comely for [her] sex." The seeds of the...

The author argues that Louisa's "Marmee," Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world--exploding the myth that her outspoken idealist father was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence.