Journalist Betsy Israel paints remarkably vivid portraits of single women -- and how they have been perceived -- throughout the decades using primary sources, including private journals, newspapers, and other materials from popular media. From the nineteenth-century spinsters of New England to the Bowery girls of New York City, to the career girls of the 1950s and 1960s, single women have fought to find, and feel comfortable in, that room of their own. One need only look at Bridget Jones and the Sex and the City gang to see that single women still maintain...