Miriam Schneir

Miriam Schneir’s writings reflect her lifelong commitment to issues of peace, justice, and equality. She is the editor/author of a three-book series dedicated to uncovering the hidden history of women. The series includes the anthologies Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings—published in the United States, with editions in the United Kingdom, Australia, Russia, and Korea—and Feminism in Our Time, which contains foundational documents in the struggle for women’s rights as well as excerpts from work by Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Audre Lorde, Germaine Greer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and many others. A prequel, Before Feminism: The History of an Idea Without a Name, published in 2021, traces the development of feminist sentiment from ancient Greece to the founding of the first movement for women’s rights in 1848. Miriam coauthored, with her husband Walter Schneir, Invitation to an Inquest, a groundbreaking investigation of the atomic-espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Widely reviewed and discussed in the media, it inspired a public debate at New York City’s Town Hall and several documentary films. As caches of previously secret government files were made public, the Schneirs prepared follow-up editions of Invitation to an Inquest, and in 2011 they published a summing up: Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case (Melville House). Articles by Miriam alone or written jointly with Walter have appeared in various national publications, including The Nation, Ms., The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Review of Books. Their writings cover topic as diverse as educational reform, free speech, mccarthyism, women’s history, and law. An investigative report on right-wing attacks on the press received the Free Press Association’s Mencken Award for “outstanding journalism in support of liberty.” Miriam and Walter Schneir have lived in New York City; in Pleasantville, New York; and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. They have two sons and a daughter and four grandchildren. Walter died in 2009.