100 books like Maria Montessori

My husband and I agree that this is the best biography of Maria Montessori available. My husband relishes the historical context and I enjoy the personal stories, and the education details. The author brings this powerful woman to life, finely weaving Montessori’s story into the cultures and politics of Europe at the time. She presents an interesting and detailed perspective of not only an educator, but also a medical doctor, and crusader for social reform, including the rights of women and children.

I don’t usually care about signed books, but after hearing this author speak, I stood in line for just that! Montessori had many insights about children based on her observations, but not everyone believed them. In the years since her death, scientific studies have been conducted that confirm her conclusions. This book is rich in detail about how calls “the factory model” of education came about, and how following Montessori principles can turn this around for the good of children and of society. Professor Lillard, a skeptic until she began her own research to discover and assess authentic Montessori education, details the impact of the movement in learning, executive function, learning from peers, extrinsic rewards and motivation, the order in the environment and the mind, and much more.

What happens after a child finishes Montessori preschool?

That was the question for my own children. I was able to take the Montessori 6-12 training in order to keep up with them, but parents and teachers can learn a lot about this age here. Dr. Montessori examines the educational concerns of the older child, the adolescence, and even the university student. She considers each level on its own because human beings have different needs at different ages. She explores ways to support the physical, mental, social, and psychological needs of each age. It is in this book that we learn about the Erdkinder, or Farm School, where the need for real work, independence, and related research, and work-based academic study is being provided in several countries today.

These lectures were delivered by Montessori during the first teacher training course given in London after she returned from forced exile in India as an Italian national during WWII. I received lectures based on them during my own Montessori course in London, but not until 2012 were they organized and edited by my good friend Annette Haines, and published as a book. Montessori’s granddaughter Renilde Montessori wrote the foreword. The lectures speak to many aspects of Montessori valuable today such as: education based on psychology rather than a fixed curriculum, education from birth, unlocking intelligence, social development, education for independence, solving social problems through education, when to give children the truth and when fairy tales are appropriate, and the difference between work and play.

I was captivated by this epic tale of Grazia dei Rossi, secretary to the powerful wife of the Pope’s physician and the daughter of a powerful banker.

The book gave me a fascinating peek into Jewish life in Renaissance Italy as Grazia struggles between the temptations of Christian life and the pull of her Jewish heritage.

It is an anthology of essays that provide a range of topics and approaches to women who lived and worked in these small towns, now spectacularly preserved despite their sudden destruction by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. The lives lived here tend towards the gritty, workaday world with studies of women in business and trade, although elite women, public priestesses, also make an appearance. Two that feature women's names scratched on walls (graffiti) and drawings of women etched in or painted on Pompeian walls (by Erika Zimmermann Damer and Margaret L. Laird) argue for women's (partial) literacy and their greater visibility. These essays do much to make the fascinating archaeological material accessible.

Sometimes reading eighteenth-century writing can be tedious due to the differing norms and expectations of writing. But Archangela Tarabotti’s essays burn the page.

Her anger is incandescent. She became a cloistered nun without a calling and lived her years trying to make a life of letters. Though she had a couple patrons—men—who brought her books and helped publish her works, she was at their mercy and was later nearly silenced by them. She rails against fathers, priests, and powerful nobles who limit women’s choices and voices. I have never forgotten her anger at injustice.

This incredible book gave names and faces to the women of Southern Italy, who, until recently, were mostly ignored by writers—and, by extension, readers. It taught me about the intensely difficult life my own female ancestors endured and stories that did not travel with them to the United States for those who immigrated—stories that were left behind, and for good reason.

The book was written in the 1970s after Cornelisen worked in the South, helping to establish nursery schools there. But the story is not her own. The stories belong to the strong, overworked, oppressed, inspiring women of Basilicata.

This older, quieter novel by Sarah Dunant has stayed with me over the years. It tells the story of a young Italian woman forced into a convent after a clandestine love affair. This was the fate of thousands of Renaissance women, whether or not they had a religious vocation: convents were repositories for “surplus” women who couldn’t be respectably married off.

I appreciate how this book focuses on the surprising complexity of the cloister, from the friendships and enmities among the nuns to their incredible knowledge and expertise in music and medicine.

Dunant’s books about Renaissance Italy are always well-researched, and she has a flair for integrating small details that bring this hidden world to life.

I came across this book in the research stage of writing my new novel and from the very beginning I was hooked. I love a good fairytale, in this case Rapunzel, retold as feminist historical fiction. The characters are deliciously multi-faceted, the alternating storylines deftly woven together, and I felt like I was being doled out insights into where we are now as women through the lens of where we’ve been before. Engaging and enlightening. After reading it I felt inspired to read more of her work, write more of my own, and empower as many women as possible.