Expect great things! How the Katharine Gibbs School revolutionized the American workplace for women

"Expect Great Things!" was the motto of Katharine Gibbs, founder of the secretarial school bearing her name. As a 48-year-old widow, she founded this school in the 1910s, which turned out well-rounded graduates known as "Gibbs Girls." The women's reputations were second to none, having been schooled in typing and stenography, and also taught academic subjects by elite professors, making them attractive job candidates. Gibbs believed that there was no "right background" or connections needed to make it in the business world. Her goal was to help young ladies find meaningful employment in the arts, government, and other sectors so that they wouldn't have to marry for financial security. In addition, she poised them for success beyond secretarial roles. Krefft delves deeply into the importance of Gibbs and her impact on women in the workplace. The book features impressive stories and photographs of students who worked for Disney, became television stars, found work as writers, and more. Readers interested in women's rights, feminism, and the history of the Barbizon Hotel for Women (where many students resided) will find this piece of history informative and entertaining.

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.)

A boon for working women. Author and journalist Krefft draws on school records, personal papers, oral histories, and published material for a lively history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School, which empowered young women to reinvent their role in the working world. Besides perfecting secretarial skills, Gibbs students learned "how to walk, talk, dress, and behave so they belonged among the swells." Katharine Gibbs (1863-1934) was a 40-year-old widow with two young sons when she faced dire financial straits: When her husband died suddenly, without a will, inheritance law left her with nothing. Despairing of finding a job, she decided to become an entrepreneur and open a secretarial school. With a six-week secretarial studies course at Simmons College in Boston as preparation, she founded the Katharine Gibbs School of Secretarial and Executive Training for Educated Women, with branches in Providence, Boston, and New York. Admission standards were high, dress codes unbending (hats, white gloves, trim suits), and the curriculum rigorous--"a combination of skillset boot camp and C-suite finishing school," with visiting instructors from Harvard, Columbia, Brown, MIT, and Wellesley. Krefft creates succinct biographies of many Gibbs students, examining their motivations for enrolling and their subsequent careers. Loretta Swit, for example, went to Gibbs to have a fallback in case her dream of becoming an actress didn't pan out. Among her jobs after graduation was as personal secretary to newspaper columnist Elsa Maxwell. Others found positions in government, the military, and the entertainment industry. One helped create Wonder Woman; some launched careers as authors. By the late 1960s, though, the school seemed out of date, as women's aspirations changed. By 2011, it closed permanently, after more than five decades of offering its students a much-desired path to independence. A fresh contribution to women's history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.