Press
"Knight's decision to focus on Addams's early years is a stroke of genius. We know a great deal about Jane Addams the public figure. We know relatively little about how she made the transition from the 19th century to the 20th. In Knight's book, Jane Addams comes to life...Knight [is] an independent scholar... Citizen is written neither to make money nor to gain academic tenure; it is a gift, meant to enlighten and improve. Jane Addams would have understood." Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review, January 15, 2006.
"Knight tells a fascinating story of Addams's attempts to clean up the boss-ridden politics of Chicago in the 1890s... My only complaint about the book is that there wasn't more of it." Kathleen Dalton, Chicago Tribune, Nov. 13, 2005
"Knight makes a convincing case for Addams as a serious thinker; her research is exemplary." Harold Henderson, Chicago Reader, November 11, 2005.
“For anyone feeling confused or despairing about the world's dangers and divisions now, Louise Knight has arrived in the nick of time with a biography of Jane Addams. Whether the problem was hostility toward the female half of the world or sweat shops, class and race divisions or a love of war, Jane Addams took them all on — with enough success to become the first female American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. By focusing on the first half of her life,
Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy gives us just what we need to realize that our struggle for cooperative justice and democracy has both precedent and hope.”
— Gloria Steinem
“Jane Addams was the most prominent woman leader in America during the first third of the twentieth century. More than any other book to date,
Citizen explains how she achieved that status and why her story continues to resonate for those women and men who still believe that democracy is more than an illusion.”
— Joseph J. Ellis, author of His Excellency: George Washington
“Louise Knight's passion for her subject has produced a powerful biography of Jane Addams that releases America's best-known reformer from the limiting stereotype of selfless do-gooder. In
Citizen, Knight gives a compelling and nuanced account of how Addams found her way onto the stage of American public life, ultimately making herself a prime actor in the national drama of reform politics at the height of the Progressive era. Knight's exhaustive search through primary source material has yielded a multifaceted portrait of a fully human, profoundly compassionate, and dedicated activist that offers fresh insight into an earlier time and much-needed inspiration in our own.”
— Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters:
Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism
“This superb biography opens up whole new vistas in our exploration of Jane Addams, the Progressive Era, and, -indeed-, all of modern American democracy.
Citizen is a splendid biography that is both deeply loving and, when necessary, suitably critical. While building on the impressive recent outpouring of scholarship on Addams, Louise Knight offers original and persuasive interpretations at every turn. The result is a major triumph that should be of interest not only to historians but also to the general public that Jane Addams herself so effectively engaged politically and intellectually.”
— Robert Johnston, author of The Radical Middle Class
“Jane Addams's life and words have a spellbinding power, and Louise Knight's wonderful biography of her captures that passion. At this distressing moment in American political history, it is a pleasure to read in detail about the life of such a deeply admirable woman who found her way through a troubling and tumultuous era.
Citizen is an excellent and compelling book.”
— Rebecca Edwards, author of Angels in the Machinery:
Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era
“A masterful and compelling take on an American original. In this volume we watch, fascinated, as a middle-class daughter turns her own private doubt and pain into profound insight about public events.”
— Leon Fink, author of Progressive Intellectuals
and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment
