The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 19201976: Political Passions, Women's Rights, and Congressional Battles

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The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 19201976: Political Passions, Womens Rights, and Congressional Battles, by Alan H. Levy, marks the first full biography of Bella Abzug. Abzug was one of woman in politics in mid- and late-twentieth-century America. Levy traces the New York City world of Russian-Jewish immigrants into which Abzug was born. He then examines her education through Columbia Law School, her marriage, and her early work both as a labor attorney and as an advocate for many controversial causes, including that of an African-American falsely accused of raping a white woman in Jim Crow Era Mississippi. Levy studies Abzugs work for nuclear disarmament, her activism against the Vietnam War, and her successful bid for Congress in 1970. From there, the biography details the myriad of issues with which Abzug grappled as a Member of Congress from 1971 to 1977, and ends with her close loss to Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1976. A second book, studying the rest of Abzugs life from 1976 to 1998, is to follow.

Reviews

Well researched and carefully written, Levys The Political Life of Bella Abzug is a perfect text for students in history, political science, womens studies, gender studies, and American studies. Graduate students will find rich sources to mine and ideas to confirm and challenge. Finally, the lively readability of Levys text makes it a book that general readers will enjoy, particularly in the current contentious political climate that is sometimes mistaken as uniquely combative and obstructionist. Politicians in the 1970s and 1980s also played hardball, and as Levys work confirms, Abzug played that way too. * Journal of American History *
Alan Levy artfully creates a vivid portrait of Bella Abzug from her birth in the Bronx in 1920 (one month prior to the ratification the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote) to political defeat in 1976, with more to come in a much anticipated sequel. As an advocate for the poor, oppressed minorities, women, blacks, Hispanics, and gays, she had no peer. A page turner, this book reads like a psychological novel that explains the rise and fall of a brilliant if flawed woman. -- Joseph Dorinson, Long Island University, Brooklyn

Author Bio

Alan H. Levy is professor of American history at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania where he has taught modern American history for 30 years.