I’ve been fascinated by the women reformers and activists of the Progressive Era for a long time. They are some of my favorite historical shin-kickers.[1] They made the world a safer, better place for women, children, blue collar workers, and immigrants, often at great personal cost. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately.

Which led me to finally read Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism by Joanna Scutts. Hotbed is the story of Heterodoxy, a not-entirely-secret social club for radical women that met regularly for 25 years. They named themselves Heterodoxy because they were not brought together by a single issue, with the possible exception of the belief that women were fundamentally equal to men. (Though they disagreed even on issues of feminism, a word they helped introduce to a broader public through lectures and publications.)

Scutts traces the big arc of the organization, from its foundation on a Saturday afternoon in 1912 through the early years of the Second World War. She gives us the stories of individual members and, to my surprise, those of women who were not members of Heterodoxy but were involved in individual campaigns alongside members. She takes us deep into Heterodoxy’s involvement in the labor and suffrage movements, and the way World War I created divisions in both movements over the questions of pacifism and patriotism. She also looks at other issues that engaged the energies of individual members, including modernist art, birth control, the right of married women to continue to work, and experiments with family structure, childcare, and living arrangements

I will admit, I found the book overwhelming at times: so many people doing so many things. (It helped to read it in small bites and give my brain a chance to digest it.) But it is well worth reading if you are interested in the foundations of modern feminism, activism at the beginning of the twentieth century, or kick-ass women.

If you decide you would like to look at the same period and many of the same events through the lens of a single life, I strongly recommend Rebel Cinderella by Adam Hochschild, the story of Rose Pastor Stokes.

[1] As defined by me, shin-kickers are people who push society’s boundaries and make them bend. Who sit where they aren’t supposed to sit, speak up when the world wants them to be quiet, and study things people tell them they can’t study. Who find their voice or kick open doors. Not always comfortable to be around ,but incredibly important.