What if someone could commit you to an insane asylum for life with a simple signature? Or send your children to live with strangers? Or fire you from your job if you married? Or deposit your paycheck in their own bank account? Or hit you when they felt like it? Or claim ownership over your body and every stitch of clothing on your back, including your underwear?Today, we take for granted that none of the above is legal. Not long ago, all of it was. Fearless Women shows how each era of United States history made a unique and invaluable contribution to overturning the subjugation of women, step by step. It is the wild, sometimes heart-stopping tale of their fight for simple human rights across eight generations from 1776 to the present.Even before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Abigail Adams asked her husband John Adams to rewrite everyday laws so that “vicious” men could no longer abuse women “with impunity.” She reminded him, using the Founders’ own language, that “all men would be tyrants if they could.” Please, she asked, “remember the ladies” in the new code of laws. Her husband merely responded, “I cannot but laugh.”In correspondence with other men, however, John Adams did not find the situation quite so funny. Instead, he soberly warned in 1776 that legislators must be careful not to be too inclusive or, “depend upon it, sir, women will demand a vote.” It took another 144 years, but eventually they got one.Fearless Women shows that each generation brought something new to the table. One fought for education, another for the right to speak in public. One campaigned for the property rights of married women, another for the marriage rights of single women. Some fought for the vote, others to decriminalize birth control and abortion. At the risk of their lives sometimes, they overturned law after law, custom after custom. The steep climb from there to here was never easy. Looking back, it is inspiring.