“A Sister’s Memories is a valuable addition to the historical literature on a generation of women reformers who did much to shape a new American social contract between 1900 and 1930. Editor Sorensen has woven together the scattered and incomplete segments of Edith Abbott’s memoirs into a well-crafted whole, finally allowing scholars to fill important gaps in the understanding of Edith and Grace Abbott’s contributions to Progressive reform. The book is essential reading for all who are interested in the Progressive-Era origins of modern America.”

Kathryn K. Sklar, author of Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work

“Edith Abbott left behind an unfinished memoir-biography of the life and work of her brilliant younger sister, Grace, the prominent Progressive advocate for immigrants and children. It has been Sorensen’s inspired and skillfully executed task to complete this biographical project, working with the incomplete text and the author’s fragmentary notes and rough drafts. Intended solely for the general reader, and thus free of footnotes or annotations, this lively and well-written book is just what we need to improve the lives of immigrants and children today—a guide to the best arguments and strategies, as captured in Grace Abbott’s remarkable story.”

Louise W. Knight | author of Jane Addams: Spirit in Action and Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle

“Grace Abbott emerged as one of the leading reformers of her generation. Studious, committed, and experienced, she worked with recent immigrants through Hull House in Chicago, headed the Children’s Bureau, and assisted in the crafting of New Deal legislation. This lightly edited volume, compiled from the notes and partially written chapters of her sister Edith, provides some insights about the motivation and dedication with which she undertook this work. Edith Abbott was an accomplished social welfare worker in her own right, and intended to publish a book to ensure that her sister’s contributions would be remembered. She included personal anecdotes about their childhood in Nebraska, their years spent in Chicago, and correspondence from Grace’s long service with the Children’s Bureau. . . . Recommended.”

Choice

“Unlike some of her well-known contemporaries and colleagues, such as Hull House founder Jane Addams and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Abbott is not a household name—not even among the social activists and social workers who now build on the foundation she helped to construct. With the publication of A Sister’s Memories, John Sorensen—serving as a sort of amanuensis for Grace Abbott’s sister Edith—aims to correct this oversight. . . . The credit for this readable volume goes both to Edith Abbott, who died before she could complete her intended four-volume memoir-biography, and to Sorensen, who has painstakingly assembled A Sister’s Memories from multiple versions of the extant manuscript held in far-flung repositories.”

Social Service Review

“The work of many women activists of the early twentieth century went undocumented and unheralded for decades, often until it was recovered by historians in the 1980s. Grace Abbott’s work, in particular, may have been dropped from the record because she did not position herself as a maternal guardian of children, but as an informed expert. Assertive rather than emotional, she spoke in languages—statistics, the law—that many men considered their exclusive domain. Women activists of this generation sometimes wrote their own and each other’s histories, perhaps because they knew no one else was going to. A Sister’s Memories reminds us that Progressive women reformers made themselves heard first by advocating for what they felt was right, and then by documenting what they had done.”

Times Literary Supplement