With a masterful ability to connect their social contexts to well-chosen and telling details of their personal lives. Claudia Roth Pierpont gives us portraits of twelve amazingly diverse and influential literary women of the twentieth century, women who remade themselves and the world through their art. Gertrude Stein, Mae West, Margaret Mitchell, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Marina Tsvetaeva, Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy and Olive Schreiner: Pierpont is clear-eyed in her examination of each member of this varied group, connecting her subjects firmly to the issues of sexual freedom, race and politics that bound them to their times, even as she exposes the roots of their uniqueness. Passionate Minds enriches our understanding of these women’s contributions to literature, popular culture and political life.