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, often uncompensated, and almost wholly the province of female family and community members. This began to change at the end of the nineteenth century when the prospect of formal training opened for women doors that had been previously closed. Nurses became respected professionals, and becoming a formally trained nurse granted women a range of new social choices and opportunities that eventually translated into economic mobility and stability. Patricia D'Antonio looks closely at this history—using a new analytic framework and a rich trove of archival sources—and finds complex, multiple meanings in the individual choices of women who elected a nursing career. New relationships and social and professional options empowered nurses in constructing consequential lives, supporting their families, and participating both in their communities and in the health care system. Narrating the experiences of nurses, D'Antonio captures the possibilities, power, and problems inherent in the different ways women defined their work and lived their lives. Scholars in the history of medicine, nursing, and public policy, those interested in the intersections of identity, work, gender, education, and race, and nurses will find this a provocative book. A valuable resource and an excellent addition to any library's collection for those interested in the history of nursing and the struggle of a profession to become autonomous. ― Doody's Review Service This new book is both a remarkable story about a noble profession and a rich illustration of the important place of the scholarly press. ―Dan Doody, MedInfoNow A rich analysis. ― Bookwatch The vignettes in this book provoke images of nurses not as powerless but rather as strong, often independent, women who take life fully into their own hands. ―Peter I. Buerhaus, JAMA [D'Antonio] posits that people chose nursing because of the meaning and power that a nursing identity brought to their lives within both family and community and over a lifetime. ― Choice Ambitious history of women and work . . . The strengths of this book are many. ―Susan L. Smith, American Historical Review Patricia D'Antonio's argument will upend many of the standard beliefs about nursing and its history. She stays sensitive to the psychological and cultural tropes and debates while demonstrating a wildly sophisticated historical imagination and scholarly apparatus. This will become the book on the history of nursing. ―Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College Patricia D'Antonio's argument will upend many of the standard beliefs about nursing and its history. She stays sensitive to the psychological and cultural tropes and debates while demonstrating a wildly sophisticated historical imagination and scholarly apparatus. This will become the book on the history of nursing. -- Susan M. Reverby Patricia D'Antonio is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and the associate director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is a Senior Fellow with the Leonard Davis Institute. She is an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Manchester's School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work; a coeditor of Nurses' Work: Issues across Time and Place and Enduring Issues in American Nursing , and the author of Founding Friends: Families, Staff, and Patients at the Friends Asylum in Early Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia . Nursing Nursing History American Nursing Non-Fiction Nursing History