This volume is a general history of American women artists, suitable for use as a textbook, and threading the fine line between appealing to a broad readership while containing a large measure of scholarly depth. The author considers a diversified range of traditional and avant-garde styles, and many media, including fine and decorative arts, excepting only photography and architecture. Along with art, Rubinstein addresses the broader cultural context in which these artists worked, noting interactions, collaborations with other artists, to highlight the relation between women's art and their social and cultural circumstances. Numerous quotations from both the artists themselves and their contemporaries serve to create a vivid chronicle of how these women worked, the historical influences that shaped them, and how their careers progressed. The author states in the introduction that her aim was not simply to add women to the existing art histories, but to illustrate how "Women have played an active, influential, and continuous role in the creation of every type of art in America."