Jean Zimmerman

With husband Gil Reavill as co-author, Zimmerman published Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls’ Lives (Doubleday, 1998), which was a Finalist for the 1999 Books for a Better Life Award sponsored by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Zimmerman's next book, Made from Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth (2003), was an exploration of homemaking from a feminist perspective.

Zimmerman's historical novel The Orphanmaster, set in 17th century New Amsterdam, has been optioned for a film.

Her non-fiction book, The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty (2006), gives a historical portrait of women in pre-Revolutionary New York City, with specific reference to Philipse Manor Hall and Philipsburg Manor House. Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance is a dual biography of Edith Minturn Stokes and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, a nineteenth-century couple known for philanthropy, architecture and documenting New York City history.

For her first book Zimmerman coauthored, with Felice N. Schwartz, a book about women in corporations, Breaking With Tradition: Women and Work, the New Facts of Life (1992) based on the Harvard Business Review article that ignited the “mommy track” debate. Her first solo work was Tailspin: Women at War in the Wake of Tailhook (1995) which focused on the Tailhook Association scandal and the crucial link between sexual harassment and the role of women as warriors.

A graduate of Barnard College, Zimmerman earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the Columbia University School of the Arts, and was awarded a New York State Fine Arts grant in 1983. She is married to Gil Reavill.

Jean Zimmerman (born 1957) is an American author, poet and historian.