Miki Pfeffer earned her Ph.D. in Urban History after long careers as a fashion illustrator in New Orleans department stores and as a manufacturer’s representative of women’s business fashions. Her decade-long research grows naturally from that involvement in women’s presentation of self and from her observation of women’s struggle for power and acknowledgment in the workplace. She is not surprised that issues in the Woman’s Department of the 1884 Cotton Centennial Exposition are still pertinent in the twenty-first century. 'Miki makes a historical yarn unfold like a novel. She has an easy-going, readable style. The story itself is of interest to Orleanians—the nationally known feminist, Bostonian Julia Ward Howe (she also wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic”) was invited to head of the Women’s Exhibition at the World’s Fair, and the local women gave her a chilly reception, to say the least. ... but the book is a good read for anyone.' \— Charlie Suhor Southern Ladies and Suffragists has been selected by Mississippi University for Women for the 2015 Eudora Welty Prize.