The definitive record of the history, lore, and lost secrets of the Eclectic Society at Wesleyan University from its inception in 1837 through a great period of upheaval in the 1960s. The Society was founded in 1837 at Wesleyan, making it one of the oldest college fraternal organizations in the United States.
A sweeping biography of one of the most influential and successful business-women in American history, BECOMING ELIZABETH ARDEN opens the Red Door to a world of wealth, glamor, and the profitable business of beauty Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over before her death in 1966. Arden counted British royalty and social elites from the overlapping worlds of New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris among her clients. She revolutionized skin care and cosmetics, making it acceptable for all women to embrace glamour and wear makeup—not just actresses and prostitutes. She created a successful international business empire before women gained the vote and at a time when virtually no woman owned or ran a national company. She developed the first luxury spa and insisted on a holistic understanding of health and beauty. Unconventional and driven, Arden fervently believed that every woman could be beautiful. Acclaimed biographer Stacy Cordery does full justice to one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs. Canadian-born Florence Nightingale Graham turned herself into Elizabeth Arden, using her uncanny sense of the possible to take full advantage of everything New York City offered, building her company and becoming one with her brand. In an astounding rags-to-riches tale, Elizabeth Arden came to personify sophistication and refinement. Her hard work and innovation made makeup, fitness, and style not only acceptable but de rigueur. Arden prospered throughout the Depression, reimagined women’s needs during two World Wars, and by pioneering new approaches to marketing and advertising, ushered beauty into the modern era. Cordery delivers a compelling picture of a modern CEO whose career provides a model for aspiring businesses to this day.
When founded in 1911, Connecticut College for Women was a pioneering women's college that sought to prepare the progressive era's «new woman» to be self-sufficient. Despite a path-breaking emphasis on preparation for work in the new fields opening to women, Connecticut College and its peers have been overlooked by historians of women's higher education. This book makes the case for the significance of Connecticut College's birth and evolution, and contextualizes the college in the history of women's education. «Eighth Sister No More» examines Connecticut College for Women's founding mission and vision, revealing how its grassroots founding to provide educational opportunity for women was altered by coeducation; how the college has been shaped by changes in thinking about women's roles and alterations in curricular emphasis; and the role local community ties played at the college's point of origin and during the recent presidency of Claire Gaudiani, the only alumna to lead the college. Examining Connecticut College's founding in the context of its evolution illustrates how founding mission and vision inform the way colleges describe what they are and do, and whether there are essential elements of founding mission and vision that must be remembered or preserved. Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, and seminal works on higher education history and women's history, «Eighth Sister No More» provides an illuminating view into the liberal arts segment of American higher education.
In The Qualified Student Harold S. Wechsler focuses on methods of student selection used by institutions of higher education in the United States. More specifically, he discusses the way that college and university reformers employed those methods to introduce higher education into a broader cross-section of America, by extending access to an increased number of students from nontraditional backgrounds. Implicit in much of this book is an underlying social and ethical question: How legitimate was and is higher education’s regulation of social mobility? Public concern over colleges’ and universities’ practices became inevitable once they became regulators between social classes. The challenging of colleges’ admissions policies in the courts augments similar concerns that have been present in legislatures for decades. The volume is divided into three main sections: Prerequisites, Columbia and the Selective Function, and Implications. It focuses mainly on four universities, The University of Michigan, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the City University of New York. Wechsler maintains that unlike other universities, these institutions were pacesetters; they did not adopt a new policy simply because some other college had already adopted it. A new introduction brings the book, originally published in 1977, up to date and demonstrates its continuing importance in today’s academic world of selective admissions.
It's been more than a century since Connecticut had big league baseball, but in the 1870s, Middletown, Hartford, and New Haven fielded professional teams that competed at the highest level. By the end of the decade, when the state's final big league team, Mark Twain's beloved Hartford Dark Blues, left the National League, baseball's transition from amateur pastime to major league sport had been accomplished. And Connecticut had played a significant role in its development. The history of the Nutmeg State's three major league teams is described here in full, and the author thoughtfully examines their influence within the regional baseball scene.
