Cornell women are well-represented in the Ladies Home Journal 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century (Meredith Books, 1998, $29.95).

At least seven women with Cornell affiliations grace this coffee-table edition, and Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell, was a member of the board of advisers who played a key role in selecting the finalists for the book.

"One of the most important criteria was that the subjects should be the very first women who made breakthroughs in their fields," said Norton. "That's why, for instance, under athletes Wilma Rudolph was chosen over Jackie Joyner-Kersee in track and Billie Jean King over Martina Navratilova in tennis."

Norton was among a prestigious editorial advisory board of seven professors of women's studies or women's history from top universities across the country, including Cornell, Brown, Duke and Harvard. They met in the summer of 1997 at the Ladies Home Journal offices in New York City. Their daunting mission was to review a staggering array of 250 names.

"It was a huge list but not necessarily complete. We added some names and rejected others the Journal staff had proposed," said Norton. "There was disagreement about whether Princess Di was sufficiently important, and the inclusion of Martha Stewart was controversial as well.

"Another issue was whether the list should focus exclusively on American women or try to include prominent women from other countries, which would have made the task even more difficult," Norton observed. "In the end, we decided that the only non-Americans included should be those who had measurable impacts of one kind or another on American women."

During the meeting, which took place two months before the death of Princess Diana, Norton and the other advisers reduced the original master list to about 150 names. The Journal staff took care of the rest, selecting 100 women who best met their criteria.

Women with Cornell affiliations in the book include: pioneering photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, who earned her Cornell bachelor's degree in 1927; Betty Friedan, distinguished visiting professor and director of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations' New Paradigm Program; Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the second woman ever appointed as a Supreme Court justice, who received her Cornell bachelor's in 1954; Jane Goodall, world-renowned animal behaviorist, who is a Cornell A.D. White professor-at-large; Barbara McClintock, the 1983 Nobel Prize winner for medicine, who earned her bachelor's (1923), master's (1925) and doctoral (1927) degrees at Cornell; Toni Morrison, the 1993 Nobel Prize winner in literature, who received a Cornell MFA degree (1955) and is an A.D. White professor-at-large; and Frances Perkins, former U.S. Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt and the first female cabinet member, who was one of the early faculty members of Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

The book features more than 200 photographs in full color and black and white alongside concise profiles on each subject.