Recommendations based on "Holding the Line"

Taking us on a journey through science, the book challenges our preconceptions about men and women, investigating the ferocious gender wars that burn in biology, psychology and anthropology. The author revisits the landmark experiments that have informed our understanding, lays bare the problem of bias in research, and speaks to the scientists finally exploring the truth about the female sex. The result is an account of women's minds, bodies and evolutionary history. Interrogating what these revelations mean for us as individuals and as a society, the book unveils a fresh view of science in which women are included, rather than excluded

Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it’s like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection, with a foreword by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour “A stirring, provocative and well-made new anthology . . . that rewrites the hoary rules of the foreign correspondent playbook, deactivating the old clichés.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat—female journalists—are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war. From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are unique—as are their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on Whatsapp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers.  In Our Women on the Ground, nineteen of these women tell us, in their own words, about what it’s like to report on conflicts that (quite literally) hit close to home. Their daring and heartfelt stories, told here for the first time, shatter stereotypes about the region’s women and provide an urgently needed perspective on a part of the world that is frequently misunderstood. INCLUDING ESSAYS BY: Donna Abu-Nasr, Aida Alami, Hannah Allam, Jane Arraf, Lina Attalah, Nada Bakri, Shamael Elnoor, Zaina Erhaim, Asmaa al-Ghoul, Hind Hassan, Eman Helal, Zeina Karam, Roula Khalaf, Nour Malas, Hwaida Saad, Amira Al-Sharif, Heba Shibani, Lina Sinjab, and Natacha Yazbeck

Art historian Catherine McCormack challenges how culture teaches us to see and value women, their bodies, and their lives.Venus, maiden, wife, mother, monster―women have been bound so long by these restrictive roles, codified by patriarchal culture, that we scarcely see them. Catherine McCormack illuminates the assumptions behind these stereotypes whether writ large or subtly hidden. She ranges through Western art―think Titian, Botticelli, and Millais―and the image-saturated world of fashion photographs, advertisements, and social media, and boldly counters these depictions by turning to the work of women artists like Morisot, Ringgold, Lacy, and Walker, who offer alternative images for exploring women’s identity, sexuality, race, and power in more complex ways. 20 illustrations

Discover the hidden history of women—and the world—through this visual exploration of intimate objects and the surprising, sometimes shocking stories behind them.“I adored this book!”—Olivia ColmanThis is a neglected history. Not a sweeping, definitive, exhaustive history of the world but something quieter, more intimate and particular: a single journey, picked out in 101 objects, through the fascinating, manifold, and too often overlooked histories of women.With engaging prose, compelling stories, and a beautiful full-page image of each object, Annabelle Hirsch’s book contains a curated and diverse compendium of women and their things, uncovering the thoughts and feelings at the heart of women’s daily lives. The result is an intimate and stirring alternative history of humans in the world. The objects date from prehistory to today and are assembled chronologically to show the evolution of how women were perceived by others, how they perceived themselves, how they fought for freedom. Some (like a sixteenth-century glass dildo) are objects of female pleasure, some (a thumbscrew) of female subjugation. These are artifacts of women celebrated by history and of women unfairly forgotten by it. With variety and nuance, A History of Women in 101 Objects cracks open the fissures of what we think we know in order to illuminate a much richer retelling: What do handprints on early cave paintings tell us about the role of women in hunting? How is a cell phone related to femicides? What does Kim Kardashian’s diamond ring have to do with Elena Ferrante?Wide-ranging, subversive, witty, and superbly researched, this is a book that upends all our assumptions about, and presentations of, the past, proving that it has always been as complicated and fascinating as the women who peopled it.

“An honest, compelling, surprising, and vastly reassuring book about the spiritual life of women . . . This landmark book is spiritual precisely because it is authentic.”—Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., author of Minding the Body, Mending the MindWith a foreword by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.For many contemporary women, the old patriarchal models of religion are no longer relevant, forming a need to look beyond the male-oriented past to a wider, more fulfilling spiritual horizon. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Sherry Anderson and Patricia Hopkins show how many women have redefined traditional beliefs and rediscovered their own unique spiritual heritage—The Feminine Face of God. Anderson and Hopkins guide you through the sacred garden of:• Childhood—seedbed of life's sacred passage• Leaving home—finding your own inner authority• Relationships—new perspectives on intimacy• Spiritual practice—the importance of guidance and discipline• Sexuality—a wild card constantly cracking open the heart• And much moreAs women enter their sacred garden and learn the art of inner listening, they acquire the tools for living, loving, and praying authentically. In The Feminine Face of God there are seeds for growth: for creating and sustaining intimacy and love in a new way; for a new understanding of sexuality; for a new vision of family, a family of choice in a community of love.

The beloved author of Refuge returns with a work that explodes and startles, illuminates and celebratesTerry Tempest Williams’s mother told her: “I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone.”Readers of Williams’s iconic and unconventional memoir, Refuge, well remember that mother. She was one of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah who developed cancer as a result of the nuclear testing in nearby Nevada. It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as what she found when the time came to read them.“They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.” What did Williams’s mother mean by that? In fifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams creates a lyrical and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother's journals. When Women Were Birds is a kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question “What does it mean to have a voice?”Note: blank pages are intentional.

A captivating blend of reportage and personal narrative that explores the untold history of women’s exercise culture--from jogging and Jazzercise to Jane Fonda--and how women have parlayed physical strength into other forms of power.For American women today, working out is as accepted as it is expected, fueling a multibillion-dollar fitness industrial complex. But it wasn’t always this way. For much of the twentieth century, sweating was considered unladylike and girls grew up believing physical exertion would cause their uterus to literally fall out. It was only in the sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse.In Let's Get Physical, journalist Danielle Friedman reveals the fascinating hidden history of contemporary women’s fitness culture, chronicling in vivid, cinematic prose how exercise evolved from a beauty tool pitched almost exclusively as a way to “reduce” into one millions have harnessed as a path to mental, emotional, and physical well-being.Let’s Get Physical reclaims these forgotten origin stories—and shines a spotlight on the trailblazers who led the way. Each chapter uncovers the birth of a fitness movement that laid the foundation for working out today: the radical post-war pitch for women to break a sweat in their living rooms, the invention of barre in the “Swinging Sixties,” the promise of jogging as liberation in the seventies, the meteoric rise of aerobics and weight-training in the eighties, the explosion of yoga in the nineties, and the ongoing push for a more socially inclusive fitness culture—one that celebrates every body.Ultimately, it tells the story of how women discovered the joy of physical strength and competence—and how, by moving together to transform fitness from a privilege into a right, we can create a more powerful sisterhood.

‘An important contribution to our recent history’ ANDREW MARR‘Absorbing and important’ JOAN BAKEWELL‘One of my favourite reads of 2021’ GARETH RUSSELLPoignant and inspiring, Women in the War tells the first-hand stories of ten of the last surviving female members of Britain's 'Greatest Generation'.Whether flying Spitfires to the frontline, aiding code breaking at Bletchley Park, plotting the Battle of the Atlantic or working with Churchill in the Cabinet War Rooms, each of these women made a crucial contribution to the conflict overseas and helped to buttress the home front.Here they recount their remarkable experiences during the Second World War, recalling how their formative years were shaped by danger and trauma, and how friendship and romance fortified their spirits.Drawing on the insight that comes with age, they contemplate how the conflict helped women prove their worth, transforming society and sparking the later battles for equal rights.With a reporter’s eye for detail, Lucy Fisher artfully weaves together moving contemporary interviews with gripping wartime diaries and letters. This is a vivid oral history that will stay with you long after you've put it down.

Wild rumors of a Devil Baby--a child who has miniature horns and a forked tail and appears in retribution for a husband's cruelty--at Hull-House brought a flood of curiosity-seekers to Jane Addams's door. To her surprise, many of the most adamant about seeing the Devil Baby were older, working-class, immigrant women.These women, usually rather withdrawn from the community, seemed to spring to life in response to this apocryphal story--and to be inspired to tell stories of their own. The tales they shared with Addams in the wake of the Devil Baby were more personal and revealing than any they had previously told her: stories of abusive mates, lost or neglectful children, and endless, ill-paid menial labor endured on behalf of loved ones. In response to these sometimes wrenching conversations, Addams wrote The Long Road of Woman's Memory, an extended musing on the role of memory and myth in women's lives.As Addams records the difficult recollections of these women she ponders the transformation of their experiences--so debilitating and full of anguish--into memories devoid of rancor and pain. She explores the catalytic function of cautionary tales in reviving older women's sense of agency. Through moving conversations with women who had lost sons on the battlefield, she emphasizes the importance of voicing a female perspective on war. The women's stories, graphically depicting the conditions in which they lived and labored and the purposefulness that sustained them, are gracefully woven together with Addams's insights on the functioning and purpose of memory.Seen in the context of Addams's personal connection with these diverse women and their stories, her larger efforts to bring about equity and social justice appear all the more courageous and vital. Charlene Haddock Seigfried's new introduction sets Addams's observations in the context of pragmatist and feminist traditions.

In this republication, revisit the late Linda Nochlin’s pioneering writings on the representation of women in art. Women―as warriors, workers, mothers, lovers―haunt nineteenth and twentieth-century Western painting. This republication of Representing Women brings together the late Linda Nochlin’s most important and pioneering writings on the representation of women in art as she considers works by Jean-Francois Millet, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Mary Cassatt, and Kathe Kollwitz, among many others. In a riveting, partly autobiographical introduction, Nochlin argues for the honest virtues of an art history that rejects methodological presuppositions and for art historians to investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit. 170 illustrations