With over 200 illustrations and five essays based entirely on Library of Congress materials, American Women exemplifies the multicultural, interdisciplinary approach to American women's history and culture that the Library's phenomenal collections provide. Starting with chapters on general and rare books, newspapers, periodicals, and legal collections, and moving on to special-format materials such as manuscripts, prints and photographs, maps, music, recorded sound, motion pictures and television, American folklife, and foreign-language collections, this new guide is designed to help researchers plan a research strategy before they ever visit the Library of Congress.Used in conjunction with the Library's online catalogs and digitized collections, it should inspire historians, biographers, picture researchers, film and documentary makers, and others dedicated to uncovering and telling women's stories. For example, as a result of the copyright laws, for a century and a half the Library has been the recipient of bottomless resources for studying representations of women in popular culture, from graphic materials of all kinds to literary works, film, comic books, and more. As for manuscripts, the traditional underpinnings of history, the Library has for many years quietly collected the papers of many important women, from leaders of reform movements, to the two current women Supreme Court justices, to scientists, writers, and artists. Read Less