Flight of the Dove: The Story of Jeannette Rankin

Rating:
Summary: Flat, disappointing look at an American pioneer.
Review: Jeannette Rankin lurks as an obscure footnote in the history of American politics. In school we're told she was the first woman elected to Congress and the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both World Wars. And that's all we're told about her. Kevin Giles, author of "Flight of the Dove" attempts to fill in the gaps by detailing Rankin's education, involvement in the suffrage movement and struggle for world peace. Unfortunately, Giles faces a significant and self-admitted stumbling block: Rankin wrote very little of her ideas and methods for attaining peace or her other ambitions. This shortage of material makes it harder to picture Rankin in the context of her times or to understand what drove to do what she did. Giles fails to make up for this lack of material by quoting contemporary newspaper accounts that wrote about her. He also fails to delve deeply into personal journals and memoirs of Rankin's colleagues and contemporaries. While using some of these sources, he mostly summarizes them, producing a defensive condescending biography. Jeannette Rankin wasn't perfect and some of her ideas may have been wrong, but she deserves a better biography than this. She was a woman who opened a lot of doors and stood by her principles while living in a fish bowl, observed by harsh skeptics just waiting for her to make a mistake. She deserves to be understood and brought back into the American pantheon.