Elizabeth Duncan Koontz - On becoming interested in teaching

"When I was a third grader my mother, who was a teacher, and my father, who was the principal of the school, had a concern for adults in the community who were illiterate. My mother taught those adults at home, evenings. Sometimes she would check on something being cooked or whatever, and she would leave me to listen to these adults’ lessons as they read. I was a good reader, and I was able then to correct them in their reading. I was seven. That was my beginning interest, I suppose, in teaching, but it was also something else, a healthy respect for the fact that a lot of people had not had the chance to go to school.  – Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

PARTICULAR PASSIONS recounts the rich oral histories of pioneering women of the twentieth century from the arts and sciences, athletics and law, mathematics and politics.We share their journeys as they pursue successful paths with intelligence and determination, changing the world for the millions of women and men who were inspired by them.

These stories will captivate, educate, and inspire you.

Particular Passions is available on Apple and Amazon.

Gloria Steinem - On Women in Society

"I’ve been attacked viciously on a personal level for my ideas. It makes you want to go home and cry and never do anything ever again. The attacks are sort of inevitable. It’s hard to be opposed by men and/or women who feel women are inferior. That’s hard. They do a lot of things to you. They’re always attacking you sexually or saying you’re abnormal as a woman, that’s the most prevalent kind of attack, 98 percent. But I think what’s harder for all of us to take is attacks by other women who appear to believe the same things we do. It’s a tiny percentage of the attacks but it’s much more painful. It isn’t as if women had a choice. We’re all damaged people in some way. If you’re a woman who hasn’t been able to do what you want and need to do as a human being, and you see some other woman who is apparently more successful, then you want to say, “How dare she, she’s just another woman like me.” It’s self-hatred. It’s something that happens in the black movement. It happens in every group that’s been told systematically that it’s inferior. Ultimately, you believe it. You believe that your group is inferior, then it makes you angry at the other members of it and it makes you devalue them. There’s no solution for it, I don’t think, except to make a world in which women can be whole people. I only speak about it because it hurts the most."

– Gloria Steinem, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert. The oral biography of Gloria Steinem, whose dedication to feminism and social justice continues to improve life for millions of people worldwide.

Available at Amazon and Apple.

Grace Murray Hopper - On Curiosity.

"I WAS BORN WITH CURIOSITY. I always claim that I had a strong resemblance to the elephant’s child in Kipling’s Just So Stories who pokes his nose into everybody’s business. Finally the alligator latches onto his nose and the elephant’s child is pulled away and his nose gets stretched. I remember when I was about seven, we had seven bedrooms up at our summer home for all the cousins to come visiting. Each room had an alarm clock, one of those round ones with two feet and a bell up on top that rings like crazy when the alarm goes off. When we were going on a trip, Mother would always go around at night and set all the alarm clocks. One night she went around to set them and they had all been taken apart. What had happened was that I’d taken the first one apart and I couldn’t get it together so I opened the next one. I ended up with all seven of them apart. After that I was restricted to one clock. It’s that kind of curiosity: How do things work?"

– Grace Murray Hopper, from 'Particular Passions, Talk with Women Who Shaped Our Times', By Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Grace Murray Hopper, whose work with early computers transformed mathematical symbols into words, helping to usher in the era of technology.

This brief chapter is available for $0.99 on Amazon and Apple, one of 42 chapters that recounts the accomplishments, frustrations and passions of the great women of the 1920s-1970s.

Bella Abzug – On becoming a lawyer

"I decided I was going to be a lawyer when I was eleven years old. I can’t tell you that I had a role model of a woman lawyer because I really didn’t. There were some, a few, but I didn’t really know who they were. I made up my mind that you could fight for social justice more effectively as a lawyer and so I became a lawyer. Since there were only a few women lawyers, I knew that it was going to be very rough. I applied to Harvard Law School because I heard it was the best law school. Harvard wrote back and said they didn’t accept women. I was outraged. I always tell this story because it’s so cute about my mother. I turned to my mother and I said, “Can you believe this?” I always say “I turned to my mother,” because in those days there was no women’s movement so you always turned to your mother. Now I always say, my two daughters have the best of both worlds. They’re able to turn to me and the women’s movement at the same time. But anyway, I turned to my mother and said, “This is an outrage.” (I always had a decent sense of outrage.) My mother said, “What do you want to go to Harvard for? It’s far away. You haven’t got the carfare anyhow. Go to Columbia. It’s near home. They’ll probably give you a scholarship and it only costs five cents on the subway.” And I did that. I got a scholarship and it only cost five cents on the subway. I always say that’s when I became an advocate of low-cost public mass transportation.”

– Bella Abzug, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Bella Abzug, an outspoken crusader for peace and human rights who heralded in an era of social change.

Available for $0.99 at Apple and Amazon.

Diana Vreeland - On Ballet

"My education was rather spotty because my parents were very careless. They always forgot when it was fall and time for little girls to go to school, but then when they remembered they sent us. For years I was in ballet schools. I never went with the idea of becoming a professional. At a certain point I couldn’t really go to a regular school because I didn’t know anything, and ballet school was the only school my parents could keep me in. I was perfectly happy in a ballet class on a barre. I think that it’s the only way to bring up a girl, you see, because it gives her a feeling, a rhythm. Through dancing you interpret the music, and you feel the wonderful, natural things of the earth. It’s the discipline, doing everything absolutely perfectly, meeting the standards because, by God, with a ballet master like Fokine, if you didn’t you were in trouble.."

– Diana Vreeland, from 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Diana Vreeland, whose pioneering exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art elevated fashion to a fine art. One of 42 profiles from 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.'

Particular Passions is available on Amazon on Apple. 

Gloria Steinem - On Women's Rights

"What my male colleagues meant by revolution was taking over the army and the radio stations. I mean, that’s nothing. That’s very small potatoes. What we mean by revolution is changing much more than that, not just on the top. It means changing the way we think, the way we relate to each other, what we think divides us or doesn’t divide us, what we think our power relationships are in our daily life."

– Gloria Steinem, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert. The oral biography of Gloria Steinem, whose dedication to feminism and social justice continues to improve life for millions of people worldwide.

Available at Amazon and Apple.

Dorothy Canning Miller – On Collecting Art

"Nobody could possibly count the collectors in New York today. Every house you pass has a collector in it. Some of it had to do with the great increase in the numbers of artists and dealers, as well as with the extraordinary rise in the value of art. I had a lot of fun just buying what I liked, for a few hundred dollars; the Nevelsons, the folk art, the Jasper Johns, the Gorky. I bought a Franz Kline for a thousand dollars and now it’s so valuable I shouldn’t have it here in my apartment, but I just forget about all that and keep on living in my dear little firetrap. It amuses me that they’ve increased so much in value, but I’m never tempted to sell them, I just want to look at them."

– Dorothy Canning Miller, from 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.'

Available at Apple and Amazon.

Bella Abzug – On Feminism

"WHEN I FIRST RAN for Congress, people said to me, “How long have you been a feminist?” And I said, “I suppose from the day I was born.”

– Bella Abzug, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert The oral biography of Bella Abzug, an outspoken crusader for peace and human rights who heralded in an era of social change.

Available for $0.99 at Apple  and Amazon.

Julia Child - On Technique

"Provided you have fine ingredients, I think that cooking is mostly a matter of technique. And it’s the technique that I am interested in trying to show, because if you master that you can do whatever you want. Although there is much decrying of classical cooking nowadays, and of Escoffier and so on and so forth, I do think most of the talk is from people who are not real students of cooking. The classical training teaches you what to do with food and how to do it. If you don’t have that background, you really have nothing solid to depend on. Of course, you have to develop your taste for food, but that comes from experience—from eating, discussing, studying, experimenting—from taking food seriously."

– Julia Child, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine  brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Available on Apple and Amazon.

Billie Jean King – On Tennis

"I was eleven when I took up tennis at the public parks in Long Beach, California. The first day I hit the tennis ball I knew I’d found what I loved doing. There was something special about hitting the ball, the way it felt. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind."

– Billie Jean King, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times'

The oral biography of Billie Jean King, who created opportunities for women on the tennis court and in the workplace, and who continues today to champion social change and equality around the world.

Available at Amazon and Apple.