Praise & Reviews

 Diliberto’s story of four women’s activism in the early 20th century is well-researched, original, and refreshing, especially since this was a period, as the author points out, characterized by phenomena familiar today: ‘craven politicians, fake news, and a Congress in the grip of a fanatical minority.’” 

― Wall Street Journal
 

“A reminder that . . . the dynamic, capable women behind national movements are all too often written out of the history they help make.” 

― Washington Independent Review of Books
 

"Firebrands visits the Roaring Twenties and beyond, revealing how four women’s efforts shaped the course of American history. . . . Set against a familiar backdrop of flappers and mobsters, Firebrands retells history anew, demonstrating the crucial contributions women made to a fascinating time in the US." 

― Foreword
 

"Diliberto, the author of celebrated biographies and biographical fiction about women, examines Prohibition and its repeal through the lives of women who used their emergent emancipation to affect social and legal change. With culture wars raging, Diliberto’s lively and cogent historical profiles are keenly relevant." 

― Booklist
 

"In this action-packed tale, Diliberto successfully illustrates how four women with radically different backgrounds—a leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, an actress running a speakeasy, the prosecutor charged with the enforcement of Prohibition, and an aristocrat—led the fight for their respective sides. In a book about an era synonymous with gangsters and flappers, readers will appreciate Diliberto’s deep dive into these women’s lives and her new take on women’s roles during this time period. . . .  Diliberto’s writing style and the subject matter are likely to appeal to readers across genres." 

― Library Journal
 

“Gioia Diliberto’s unconventional portrait of the Jazz Age shifts the spotlight away from flappers and femme fatales to the rebels and reformers who 'played politics like a man.' Firebrands shows how the Noble Experiment of Prohibition was driven by female ambition, sparking an era of women’s political power that remains unmatched in American history.”
  ― Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age
 

“Diliberto is a masterful storyteller. In Firebrands, she brings into focus the lives of four fascinating and passionate women who joined the early twentieth-century fight for women’s equality and the right to be recognized professionally and politically, regardless of their sex. The book reads like an action-packed political drama, full of big stakes and big personalities, but that doubles as a study of how women were radically redefining their roles both in public and private spaces in the wake of the nineteenth amendment.”
  ― Ellen Wayland-Smith, author of The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America
 

“Firebrands is that rarest of narratives—a true story packed with Hollywood-worthy characters that reads like a thriller. In Diliberto’s hands, four titanic women of the Jazz Age not only collide in an epic battle for the soul of America, but become harbingers of our own lives and times. A masterpiece of storytelling and reporting that dances on nearly every page with the thrill of the dawning of new eras.” 

― Robert Kurson, author of Shadow Divers and Rocket Men