American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work

First Place, History and Public Policy, 2010 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards

This new interpretation of the history of nursing in the United States captures the many ways women reframed the most traditional of all gender expectations—that of caring for the sick—to create new possibilities for themselves, to renegotiate the terms of some of their life experiences, and to reshape their own sense of worth and power.

For much of modern U.S. history, nursing was informal, ofte...