Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women

Historian Krefft (The Man Who Made the Movies) offers an upbeat chronicle of the Katharine Gibbs School, a midcentury secretarial school that propelled a notable number of women into prominent roles in American arts and business. Gibbs, an impoverished widow who, facing money trouble after her husband’s death, felt frustrated by women’s financial dependence on men, established the school in the 1910s; by the ’50s, it was considered “the Tiffany’s” of secretarial schools. Students were taught shorthand and typing, advised on business fashion and etiquette, instructed in voice and diction, and given a solid education in government, literature, and art. Tracing the careers of its graduates—among them Wonder Woman lead writer Joye Hummel; Viking books president Clare Ferraro; and actor Loretta Swift (“Hot Lips” Houlihan from M*A*S*H)—Krefft argues that Gibbs’s curriculum subversively aimed to instill in women the self-confidence and strategic thinking needed to succeed as leaders, rather than as mere helpers. Getting a “C-Suite” secretarial position was presented to the students (if not those hiring them) as a first step to becoming executives themselves, Krefft writes, calling it “a modern-day Trojan horse campaign.” Following the feminist upheavals of the ’60s, the school became obsolete almost overnight, but Krefft’s overview serves as an exuberant and fascinating look back at how the uphill battle women faced inspired them to be creatively subversive. Readers will be engrossed. (Mar.)