Why the Winchester Rifle Heiress Built Herself a Haunted Mansion

Ghosts and Guilt Compelled the Wealthy Widow to Build San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House

Once the United States’ largest private residence and the most expensive to build, today you could almost miss it. The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, sits between the eight lanes of the I-280 freeway, a mobile home park, and the remains of a space age Century 23 movie theater. The world has changed around it, but the mansion remains stubbornly and defiantly what it always was.

Each time I visit the Mystery House I try to envision what this space must have looked like to the …

By Pamela Haag | July 5, 2016

What Do Readers Want From the Lives of American Women?

Over the Decades, the Expectations of Female Biography Subjects Have Changed, but Not as Much as We Might Think

By Elaine Showalter | June 21, 2016

A hundred years ago, in March 1916, the first biography of Julia Ward Howe was published to general acclaim. Written by Howe’s three daughters, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910 was the …

Is It Easier for a Woman to Become President Than CEO?

‘Time’ Washington Correspondent Jay Newton-Small on the Private Sector’s Gender Parity Problem

By Callie Enlow | June 7, 2016

Just an hour before the start of Time magazine Washington Correspondent Jay Newton-Small’s lecture “Are Women Changing the Way Institutions Are Run?” the news broke that Hillary Clinton had secured …

The Ladies Who Saved the U.S. Senate

Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works

By Jay Newton-Small | June 2, 2016

Whatever the outcome of the presidential election in November, the increasing influence of women in politics and culture—in some ways because they are women—is irrefutable, argues Jay Newton-Small in Broad …

God Calls My Name, but the Church Won’t Let Me Answer

The Roman Catholic Ban on Female Priests Is Leaving Women—and Thousands of Parishes—Idle and Powerless

By Jamie L. Manson | March 22, 2016

“What do you do when God calls you and the church blocks you from answering?” a journalist once asked me.

It was the pithiest articulation I’d ever heard of the …

Burlesque Is a Power Trip

Sparkly Underwear and Ostrich Feathers Give Me More Creative Freedom Than I’ve Ever Had Before

By Francesca Caviglia | December 11, 2015

The song is a hokey karaoke version of Frank Sinatra’s “Witchcraft.” It’s the week of Halloween, 2012, and I’m in a theater on New York’s Upper West Side. I’m wearing …

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