Ms. Collins talked about her book, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines, published by William Morrow. She talked about a large array of personalities: women who shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America. She began with the lost colony of Roanoke. 

Spanning wars, the pioneering days, the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, the author described the way women’s lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances, rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics.