When browsing for a book, I enjoy employing Ford Madox Ford’s “page 99” test. An English literary critic and novelist, Ford wrote in the 1920s, “Open the book to page ninety-nine and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” Hypothetically, page 99 should give a reader a window onto the style, purpose, and overall quality of any book.When I turned to page 99 of Fearless Women after typesetting, I found the story of Elizabeth Packard, a mother of six children who saved herself (along with Mary Todd Lincoln and women in eleven other states) from a lifetime in a frightening, dangerous insane asylum. Page 99 explores the terrible anxiety of Packard’s husband, who worried that she might harm his career as a preacher. Red-haired Theophilus Packard knew that a man who could not control his wife was not considered much of a man by the neighbors, and Elizabeth was just a little too unorthodox in her religious views. Page 99 interweaves the escalating back-and-forth conflict between this husband and wife with information on how the laws of divorce and child custody evolved in the young nation. By the end of the page, Theophilus has begun laying his trap, having decided to lock Elizabeth away where she can do him no harm.I hope that the Page 99 test shows Fearless Women to be a book that enlightens and entertains while it informs. As a historian, I feel it’s my job to get the dead to stand up and walk. Cry and storm off. Sometimes even to dance and tell jokes. I hope readers will find that I do.I also hope readers will take away a new understanding of the profound impact of the fight for women’s rights on the basic development of the nation. Women’s history is typically treated as a side dish—something readers might be curious about if they have some particular interest in this specialized topic. To give an example of this phenomenon, as of 2023, the Pulitzer Prize in History had been awarded only one time in 107 years to a book on women’s history—and then on the stereotypical subject of midwifery. Yet this blindness literally robs us of half our nation’s story. It is not hard to establish that feminism has been integral to the nation since 1776, if we but look.I hope readers will also reconsider the term itself, which is often used by both the right and left to divide Americans for partisan purposes. In 1935, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt tried to educate the general public on the subject. She wrote, “The fundamental purpose of feminism is that women should have equal opportunity and equal rights with every other citizen.”Like other national values, including a free press, fair judiciary, and democracy itself, the importance of feminism must be acknowledged if it is to be defended. This means understanding its historical roots and the immense diversity of its adherents. Susan B. Anthony considered failure impossible if citizens united around the nation’s founding principles. As my last chapter shows, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter shares her faith. Susan B. Anthony might have rubbed her wire-rimmed glasses at the singer’s bespangled shorts in “Run the World (Girls),” but she would have applauded her fellow feminist’s sentiment.