Endorsements and Reviews for 
Jane Addams: Spirit in Action:

“This book is as fine an introduction to the life and thought of Jane Addams as one is ever likely to read. Her internal growth as a world-class democrat, coupled with the many public causes with which she interacted, is so beautifully laid out that the reader sees vividly why Addams was, is, and remains an iconic figure in American history.”

                            Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments and The Men in My Life

“Only superlatives like excellent and elegant can do justice to Louise W. Knight’s fine Jane Addams. Whether Addams was grass-roots organizing, founding Hull House, or fighting for women’s suffrage, she was always an indefatigable warrior. If there was any real fairness in this troubled world Addams would have won three Nobel Peace Prizes instead of one. Highly recommended.”

                           Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and 
                                       The Crusade for America

“As the granddaughter of a Hull House teacher, I read this beautiful biography with a sort of intimate awe. This biography is a gift to my generation, a call for us to be as courageous and visionary in our own time as Jane Addams was in hers.” --

                            Courtney E. Martin, author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists

“Jane Addams lives in these pages. So does her work and wisdom on such ongoing concerns as immigration, the intertwined restrictions of sex and race, striving for peace in a nation at war, and acting locally while thinking globally. Thanks to Louise Knight, we can meet an experienced organizer and a friend we need right now.”

                              Gloria Steinem, feminist author, activist and organizer

Jane Addams (1860–1935) was one of the leading figures of the Progressive era. This "pragmatic visionary," as Knight calls her, is best known as the creator of Hull House, a model settlement house offering training, shelter, and culture for Chicago's poor. Addams also involved herself in a long list of Progressive campaigns. Her rhetorical skills as both speaker and writer made her internationally recognized as a supporter of civil rights, woman suffrage, and labor reform. Using brief quotes and contextual details, Knight describes her subject's journey from a Victorian upbringing that stressed family duty through her practice of lofty "benevolence" as a young woman to the confidence to unhesitatingly risk her substantial reputation advocating pacifism during WWI. Her continuing peace activities earned her a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, but antagonized many longstanding supporters. In this well-supported and appealing portrait of an iconic American, Knight emphasizes Addams's struggle to redefine Victorian womanhood and claim her right to "possess authority in the public realm" and "exercise authority" as a lobbying feminist who helped women acquire the right to vote.
                                                               Publishers' Weekly, July 26, 2010

From the book jacket: 

In this, the first full biography of Jane Addams (1860-1935) in almost four decades, Louise W. Knight captures the tumultuous life of one of the nation’s remarkable reform leaders. The book traces how Addams’s passion for social justice, which began as a fuzzy, romantic ideal, came to infuse her daily life and led her, in 1931, to become the first American woman – she is still one of only two - to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Her father’s wealth gave her a sheltered upbringing in a small town in Northern Illinois but instead of staying protected and safe, she chose a life of barrier breaking. As a young adult in the 1880s, she occupied mostly the privileged side of some key barriers. Although she was a woman living in a society that thought men superior, she was also a person of wealth in a society harshly segregated by class, and a white person of remote immigrant ancestry in a society that judged minorities and immigrants inferior. In rebellion, she moved at age 29 to the industrialized, working class, mostly immigrant West Side of Chicago, where she and a college friend co-founded the nation’s first settlement house, Hull House. Progressive political reform was far from their minds: the house was intended to be a social and cultural center where the classes could mingle and learn. But Addams’s purposes were expanded by living among people who knew the nation’s urban social, economic and political problems firsthand and her self-confidence was strengthened by making friends with Chicago’s remarkable women activists. She also discovered the obstacles created by her cultural self-righteousness and childhood prejudices and consciously set out to master them.

In tracing Addams’s story, Knight provides a fascinating journey through the Progressive Era. Addams was a leader in the settlement house movement and the campaigns to end child labor and achieve women’s suffrage and an advocate for fair immigration policies, the rights of workers to organize, free speech and other civil rights. She seconded the Progressive Party’s nomination for Theodore Roosevelt for President in 1912, and campaigned hard for his ticket, co-founded the Women’s Trade Union League, the N.A.A.C.P., and the American Civil Liberties Union, and served on the latter two organizations’ boards until her death. She opposed World War I in the face of severe criticism and in 1915 co-founded the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, which under her presidency became a worldwide force for women’s rights and peace advocacy.

The biography also takes up Addams’s ideas. Like her sometimes-reform colleagues, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Addams had a powerful analytical mind, an eloquent voice, and a skillful pen. She gave thousands of speeches and wrote eleven books on such subjects as the social responsibilities of citizens in a democracy, the challenges facing urban youth, the human trafficking of girls, the societal conditions that nurture peace, and the history of the wartime peace movement. Several were best sellers, including her continually popular memoir Twenty Years at Hull House. Able to contemplate all angles of a controversial subject, she opened the hearts of her white, upper-middle class audiences and readers to the experiences of the rest of the nation’s citizens. She told people of her own class not only about working people and immigrants’ struggles but also about their compassion for humanity, their progressive vision for the federal government, and their expectation that they be active citizens. Addams’s message, and the take away insight of this biography, is that, no matter what one’s race, gender, or class, being a citizen in a democracy is a life-transforming opportunity and responsibility.

To order a copy of the book, visit the Norton website.

Reviews

• Read the book review of Jane Addams: Spirit in Action on Salon.com.
  
• Read the Boston Globe's book review of Jane Addams: Spirit in Action. 
• Read a review from the newsroom of Northwestern University  September 16, 2010.

• Read a review from SocialWorkersSpeak.org, September 16, 2010.
  
• Read a review in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, on September 7, 2010.
  
• Read a review posted September 2, 2010 on the Chicago Tribune book review blog, Printers' Row.

Interviews

• Listen to Louise W. Knight on The Diane Rehm Show, September 9, 2010.
• Louise W. Knight's appearance on  C-Span Book TV's "Afterwords" (September 25 & 26, 2010) is available to view online.
• Listen to Louise W. Knight's radio interview on the Leonard Lopate Show (WYNC, 93.9 FM, New York City), October 21, 2010.
• On July 18th, 2013 Knight was interviewed by St. Louis Public Radio about the early history of the settlement movement. My portion begins the segment.
• Listen to Louise W. Knight's radio interview on Progressive Radio, Madison Wisconsin, June 2011.

• Listen to an interview with Louise W. Knight on Northern Spirit Radio, October 24, 2010. 
  
• An interview with Knight about how she came to write the book, in the Chicago Sun-Times, September 19, 2010.
• On August 27th, 2010 the Voice of America News website published a piece in honor of Jane Addams's 150th birthday,and posted an interview with Louise W. Knight. 
• On June 12, 2010 Louise W. Knight was interviewed at the Printers Row Bookfair by C-Span BookTV. 

Mentions

Speeches

Spirit in Action is cited in a new article in Slate Magazine.

Spirit in Action gets a nod in an article about "The 50 Most Influential Progressives of the 20th Century," (The Nation, October 4, 2010).

On July 12, 2013 - Louise Knight gave a lecture, "Jane Addams and Chautauqua," at the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York.  

October 27, 2012 - Speaker at the Theodore Roosevelt Association conference, Chicago. Knight's talk on the political friendship of Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt is one of three recorded by C-Span.