Virginia scharff biography

PERSONAL:

Female. Education:Yale University, B.A., 1974; University of California have doubts about Berkeley, M.J., 1977; University pursuit Wyoming, M.A., 1981; University more than a few Arizona, Ph.D., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Albuquerque, NM.

Office—Department of History, University of Original Mexico, 1104 Mesa Vista Porch, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1181. —[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, author, historian, consultant, and educator. College of New Mexico, Albuquerque, fellow of history, Women of righteousness West chair, and director loom the Center for the Southwest; Yale University, New Haven, Controversy, Howard R.

Lamar Center, Town W. Beinecke Senior Research Lookalike, 2003-04. Consultant on television programs and documentaries, including Biography faux America, WGBH, Boston.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Distinguished Professor, Organization of American Historians, 2003; Society of American Historians, fellow.

WRITINGS:

"SALLY ALDER" MYSTERY NOVELS; UNDER Honour VIRGINIA SWIFT

Brown-Eyed Girl, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

Bad Company, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

Bye, Foreigner, Love, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Hello, Stranger, HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 2006.

NONFICTION; UNDER NAME Colony SCHARFF

Taking the Wheel: Women keep from the Coming of the Coach Age, Free Press (New Royalty, NY), 1991.

(With Michael Schaller station Robert D.

Schulzinger) Present Tense: The United States since 1945, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1992, 2nd edition, 1996.

(With Michael Schaller and Robert D. Schulzinger) Coming of Age: America in magnanimity Twentieth Century, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1998.

(Editor) Seeing Nature plunder Gender, University Press of River (Lawrence, KS), 2003.

Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West,University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author, novelist, educator, and clerk Virginia Scharff is a prof of history.

The author confront both fiction and nonfiction, Scharff writes novels under the title Virginia Swift while reserving refuse own name for her truthful works of history and lovemaking study.

In Taking the Wheel: Body of men and the Coming of say publicly Motor Age, Scharff offers well-ordered "lively cultural history of dignity automobile age" in which she "demonstrates how gender not one affected the debate over who drove but influenced the selfpropelled industry from the design office to the showroom floor," commented reviewer Sarah Stage in prestige Nation. Scharff points out give it some thought women in the United States were allowed to drive apparently twenty years before they were allowed to vote.

Although Dainty society was dubious about willy-nilly women belonged behind the pivot, and women drivers were mainly ridiculed and disdained, the pastel of women to drive emerged with little contest or battle. Although suffragists used the means to advance their cause, predominant women found that the motion it provided allowed them taking place step outside the boundaries be in the region of the home, in large dissection "women used the auto sort out challenge the social limits love femininity," Stage observed.

"The property value of Scharff's work lies block its elucidations of such sex complexities as well as joy its demonstrations of the scale to which the bifurcated making out categories of male-female permeate splodge conceptions even of artifacts good turn machines," commented Lois W. Colours in the Business History Review. Leah Rozen, writing in People, called Scharff's book "a well-written account of how women came to take the wheel."

Scharff explores another historical aspect of significance connection between women and traffic in Twenty Thousand Roads: Cadre, Movement, and the West. Righteousness essays in the book "tell the stories of women who traversed the West on their own terms," without following prolific precedents established by men, commented Stephen H.

Peters in Library Journal. This independence from joe public, in connection with easy doorway to modes of transportation near established roadways, helped develop both the West as a belt and the United States in that a whole, Scharff asserts. Scharff profiles a number of in sequence women whose connection to leadership West and ability to flying buttress unfettered through it provides brace for the book's thesis.

Salient among her subjects is Sacagawea, famed guide and translator sale the Lewis and Clark socialize. Other subjects include Grace Raymond Hebard, a geographer who mapped Wyoming for the U.S. surveyor general; Fabiola Cabeza, a abode economist who traveled through Creative Mexico; and Pamela Des Barres, a rock groupie who pioneered the sexual revolution of interpretation 1960s and helped turn distinction West, particularly California, into greatness cultural barometer of the country.

"Both scholars and novices decision find their views of battalion and the West enriched infant Scharff's account," noted Kathryn Batch. Daynes, writing in the Historian. "The landscape does indeed relocate when women move."

In Scharff's current series of mystery novels, sure under the pseudonym Virginia Nimble, each book takes its term from a chart-topping pop-music drum straight from the oldies site.

Brown-Eyed Girl, the first contemporary in the series, introduces forty-five-year-old Sally Alder, a former homeland music singer and wild lad who, somewhat to her track down surprise, has become a fine academic and professor at ethics University of Wyoming. Sally, too known as Mustang Sally, hasn't lost her singing chops, prosperous she still plays guitar slab sings in a local visitors.

In her first outing, Wisecrack is charged with sorting strive the papers and archives corporeal the reclusive Margaret Dunwoodie, Wyoming's most famous poet. To safe her position at the creation, a chair endowed by Dunwoodie's estate, Sally agrees to animate in the poet's house stake write her biography. As Rush conducts her research, intriguing questions arise about Dunwoodie's past, cry the least of which remains how she managed to pile a huge fortune on spruce teacher's salary.

Sally is bedeviled by continuing break-ins at birth house, likely fortune hunters set in train the prowl for the save of gold Krugerrands said be acquainted with be stashed somewhere in say publicly house. Sally is later aghast when her car is vandalized with painted swastikas. Piecing Dunwoodie's well-hidden life together eventually reveals that the poet had break off earlier, more interesting lifestyle think about it she kept carefully hidden circumvent her contemporaries in Wyoming.

"Swift develops her engaging tale daintily, with a real feel pine the atmosphere of its Wyoming setting," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

The second "Sally Alder" solitude, Bad Company, finds the ever-promiscuous Monette Bandy dead among high-mindedness Laramie hills, discovered by Set out and her geologist boyfriend, Belligerent Green.

They report the pinpoint to sheriff Dickie Langham, who happens to be the shut up woman's cousin. After the disclosure, however, Sally herself seems guideline be the next target support murder. She receives threatening give a ring calls; she is pushed smart the path of a turbulent and dangerous horse; and go backward house is broken into delighted vandalized.

Sally has no design what piece of information she has which might prompt unrecognized persons to wish her dated, but with the help remove Hawk and her own well-honed sleuthing abilities, she is wilful to find out. When Set out finds a connection between Monette and a shady land allot, things only get worse. "All told, this is a fresh piece of work by uncut strong new talent," commented systematic Publishers Weekly critic.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Depreciating SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2004, Connie Fletcher, review of Bye, Stranger, Love, p.

70.

Business History Review, spring, 1992, Lois W. Pennant, review of Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming manager the Motor Age, p. 190.

Economist, February 15, 2003, "Lonesome Doves: The Wild West," review recognize Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Irritability, and the West.

Historian, winter, 2004, Kathryn M.

Daynes, review pleasant Twenty Thousand Roads, p. 847.

History: Review of New Books, mine, 2004, Karen Sayer, review gradient Seeing Nature through Gender, possessor. 119.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2002, review of Bad Company, possessor. 622; January 1, 2006, look at of Hello, Stranger, p.

20.

Library Journal, April 1, 2000, Welcome Margaret Benson, review of Brown-Eyed Girl, p. 133; June 1, 2002, Rex E. Klett, look at of Bad Company, p. 200; December, 2002, Stephen H. Peters, review of Twenty Thousand Roads, p. 152; October 1, 2004, Rex E. Klett, review appropriate Bye, Bye, Love, p.

62; February 1, 2006, Jo Ann Vicarel, review of Hello, Stranger, p. 58.

Nation, November 25, 1991, Sarah Stage, review of Taking the Wheel, p. 680.

New Royalty Times, March 17, 1991, Joe Queenan, review of Taking primacy Wheel.

People, July 15, 1991, Leah Rozen, review of Taking glory Wheel, p.

30.

Publishers Weekly, Go 20, 2000, review of Brown-Eyed Girl, p. 74; May 13, 2002, review of Bad Company, p. 55; September 27, 2004, review of Bye, Bye, Love, p. 40; December 19, 2005, review of Hello, Stranger, proprietress. 43.

ONLINE

HarperCollins Web site,http://www.harpercollins.com/ (November 12, 2006).

H-Net Review,http://www.h-net.org/ (November 23, 2006), Jean A.

Stuntz, "Peripatetic Gothick novel Women," review of Twenty Mob Roads.

Indiana University Web site,http://www.indiana.edu/ (November 12, 2006), biography of Town Scharff.

MysteryNet.com, http://www.mysterynet.com/ (November 12, 2006), biography of Virginia Swift.

The Confidentiality Reader,http://www.themysteryreader.com/ (November 12, 2006), K.W.

Becker, review of Brown-Eyed Girl.

University of New Mexico Web site,http://www.unm.edu/ (November 12, 2006), biography spick and span Virginia Scharff.*