Rankin is worth your time; I don't know that this book is

⭐⭐⭐ 

I had a tough time rating Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress. (And not just because very little of it is actually about her becoming the first woman in Congress, though one could argue that everything in her life to that point would be about that.) I had heard of Jeannette Rankin; I'm into American history so of course had heard of the woman in Congress who voted against joining both World War I and World War II. And I knew she was from Montana. But that's about all I knew.

For the first maybe quarter of this book, I was thinking that this might wind up being a 5-star review. I was fascinated to learn about Rankin's upbringing in Montana and her (and her family's) progressive views. She was born in a cabin in the wilderness; her father was one of the major contributors to Missoula's growth. I was amazed at the progressiveness of this woman born in Montana in 1880, and how living there in that time shaped her:

Decisions were made by conversation and consensus, and everyone's point of view was given weight. This culture grounded in and dependent upon participatory democracy profoundly shaped Jeannette's outlook on social change and the role of government (loc. 101)

and how it learning of a massacre of Nez Pearce by the U.S. Army in 1877 that led to Jeannette's lifelong pacifism; she later compared it to My Lai in Vietnam. As a child, she lobbied her father to give ranch hands better wages and working conditions. And when the copper kings started taking over Montana, she railed against the horrors in the Gilded Age, speaking out against child labor.

She grew up and started working for women's suffrage, and Jeannette would go to women in towns throughout the West, arguing that if women had the right to vote, it would help everyone: "women voters could blanket California in protections for workers, women, and children" (loc. 1078) and "Jeannette promised women would vote to empower unions, regulate corporations, and ensure that worker protections were codified into law" (loc. 1368). She worked tirelessly and I loved reading out this fight for women's votes. Women in Montana got the right to vote, and they promptly voted Jeannette into Congress. (At the time, Montana actually had two members in the House of Representatives, and the state wasn't divided into districts. Jeannette's enemies managed to get the state districted, and that was how she was voted out.)

Jeannette made it into Congress and the trouble started, because she was very much against entry into WWI, and many women's suffrage activists were...not exactly in favor, but didn't want Jeannette to vote against it because they thought it would hurt their cause.

As I continued reading the book, I found myself more and more annoyed with author Lorissa Rinehart, whose opinions shone through the book (in this case, making comments about the East Coast women's suffrage leaders). I assume Rinehart is from the western part of the country; her opinions about Easterners echo the opinions I heard when I moved from Connecticut to Montana in high school. The book became frustrating to read at times because the author could be so strident--and I agreed with her opinions! I'd be like, "I agree, but dang, tone it down a notch."

Particularly once the book gets into Jeannette's crusade against war, which is pretty much everything from her election on. And look, I am not in favor of war, and World War I was particularly dumb. But passages like the following (about the Lusitania) kind of just made me sigh:

Jeannette saw this tragedy not as a cause for war but as a reason to turn off the spigot of money and munitions that kept the war going. Such a measure would force Europe's evenly matched old kingdoms to reach an equitable peace without victory for either side. Many in and outside the government, including most in the suffrage movement, agreed with her at the time. Ironically, if the Wilson administration had followed this advice and ceased to intervene, this pan-European war may well have been the war to end all wars rather than the one that spawned more than a century of unprecedented global bloodshed. (loc. 1879)

I just don't think that's what would've happened if the United States hadn't entered the war. I mean, maybe? And there are also weird interjections about how the Constitutional amendment for women's suffrage was also being sacrificed ("she understood that any hope of an expanded idea of democracy in America was on the verge of being forgotten and erased altogether" [loc. 2384] and "the cause of women's rights ... would be razed in [the war's] path" [loc. 2404]) when she managed to get the votes farther than expected in Congress in 1917, I think, and the thing was passed in 1919.

The fallout from her vote against WWI was interesting, and I loved learning that she helped form the ACLU, but Rinehart doesn't really go into it much. The book focuses on her anti-war activities, with occasional sidebars like "To them [the other suffragists, I believe], despite all her success, she was persona non grata and would remain so for the rest of her life and much of history" (loc. 3077) and "Another anniversary of America's entrance into the war, another turn around the sun since Jeannette refused to be bent to the will of the powerful and was broken for the rigidity of her conscience" (loc. 3210). Rinehart also seems to credit Rankin's peace group for coming up with Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, which seems...not right.

She does work for organizations in the anti-war movement, and we get comments like "where leadership tried to clip her wings with organizational protocol and boardroom bylaws" (loc. 3593) and I honestly had a hard time telling if Jeannette was like, "I do things my way, screw you all!" or whether her bosses were being too micromanage-y. It was frustrating because honestly, by this point in the book, I didn't totally feel like I could trust Rinehart's narration and interpretation. Rankin's strategies for getting support for suffrage in the West in the early 20th century were obviously effective, but that doesn't necessarily mean they translate well for other goals.

Jeannette winds up getting elected to Congress again, where she was famously the only vote against joining WWII and then was promptly voted out of office. (Rinehart does note that after voting against the war, Rankin did vote in favor of appropriations and such to ensure that the soldiers got what they needed.) And we get glimpses of how Rankin spent her life, but without much detail

She spent years advocating for women's right to vote, the ability of labor unions to organize, the end of child labor, and the expansion of democratic voting rights for all. But most ardently and most often, she had worked for peace, and it could be said that all of her other efforts had been in its pursuit. (loc. 4411)

Rankin spent a lot of time in later years in India, which was interesting enough, though Rinehart focuses on that without delving into other issues Rankin worked on. At one point Rinehart mentions Rankin's participation in the civil rights movement without saying literally anything about what that involvement looked like. She spoke out against the Vietnam War, but again, we see very little of what that looked like.

(I did become more interested in Edna, Jeannette's sister, who worked for women's reproductive rights, becoming instrumental in extending the network of Planned Parenthood. That's awesome! More on her!)

Ultimately, I came to admire Rankin (who also spoke out in favor of getting rid of the Electoral College! She had many good ideas!), though she seems like she may have been frustrating to actually deal with--though many people with big ideas are that way. I enjoyed learning about her but got really frustrated actually reading this book, and I can't tell how much of that was because of the author interjecting all over the place. Which was even more frustrating, because Rankin seems like someone I agree with.

Do I recommend this book? Oof. I don't know. I do recommend learning more about Jeannette Rankin. 

Many thanks to  St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book. All views are mine.