Jane Haile

Jane Hailé is a social anthropologist whose research into the practical interpretation of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand has been published in the UK by Cambridge University Press, and Thames and Hudson; and in Thailand by the Journal of the Royal Siam Society, Bangkok.

For almost three decades she has worked with the United Nations in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans. Since 1998, as an independent consultant based in Brussels, she has collaborated with United Nations development agencies, European Institutions, national governments and NGOs in many countries and regions, with particular focus on gender and diversity issues, within a broader social development remit.

Jane Hailé has written and published extensively in her field and is staff reviewer of publications on gender issues for New York Journal of Books. Regular updating of her activities is available on her website. 

Book Reviews by Jane Haile

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The eye-catching, and perhaps misleading to many, title of Susanna Rustin’s book is brought to earth by its sober subtitle.

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CeCé Telfer summarizes her struggles in her eight-page prologue as the first transgender woman “to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) National Championships in the 400-meter hu

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Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl is the autobiography of a first-generation Korean American girl and then woman who tries desperately to fulfil the dreams her immigrant paren

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This charmingly produced little book is a new volume in the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series put out by Princeton University Press that aims to show how our contemporary preoccupat

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Beautiful: The Story of Julian Eltinge, America’s Greatest Female Impersonator depicts vividly, and in great detail, the extraordinary career of Julian Eltinge (1881–1941), born William Da

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Kara Loewentheil hosts a very successful podcast UNF*CK YOUR BRAIN: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone, and in her new book draws on cognitive psychology, feminist theory, and years of experience as “

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“This is a very important book and should be required reading for everyone interested in civil rights and gender equality in the health sector and beyond.”

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a fascinating collection of case studies of cross-cultural adoption . . .”

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After Sappho is labeled as a novel although most of the characters presented actually existed and the words and actions ascribed to them are translated, paraphrased, quoted with minor alte

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Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity is a collection of essays by Julia Serano originally released in 2007.

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Sarah Ditum’s book covers a period that she refers to as the “long aughts,” lasting roughly from Britney Spear’s famous 1998 song of “Baby One More Time,” until March 2013 with the release by Robin

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In her introduction to Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth, Nathalie Haynes reflects on the view explored in her publication, that we humans create gods in our own image (rather than the

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The many readers and followers of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group will certainly be aware of her participation in this “bigoted blackface prank”—the Dreadnought Hoax —but are unlikely to ha

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“every essay, whether one agrees or not with the views expressed, is a pleasure to read and always thought provoking.”

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“it is the vividness and frankness of her personal recollections that helps to lift this book above the usual run of self-help books on women’s empowerment.”

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Journalist and comedian Caitlin Moran wrote her bestselling How to Be a Woman in 2011 and has since been facing, and by her own admission, ignoring the question posed by many of her (usual

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The author, herself bisexual, undertook the book “to bring the colourful world of bi-sexual scholarship out of the shadows” and to show that bisexuality “is a normal part of sexuality,” an ambition

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“for all its limitations NOW has transformed thinking on feminism and sexism in America.”

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This is a substantive, as well as rather substantial (616 pages) publication, whose primary task is to analyze international and regional human rights treaty legislation designed to eliminate gende

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“Despite his many travails and struggles, professional and personal—in relation to sexuality, class, ethnicity, and now ageism—Duberman acknowledges also his many successes in public as in

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Feminism by Bernadine Evaristo is one of a series of books commissioned by Tate Publishing and Tate Britain ahead of the rehang of Tate Britain’s collection in 2023.

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Gender by Travis Alabanza is one of a series of books commissioned by Tate Publishing and Tate Britain ahead of the rehang of Tate Britain’s collection in 2023.

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“these vivid studies of famous personalities and their interaction do tell us in some cases more about them than we knew, and perhaps confirm that this struggling model of conventional marr

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In her often witty and trenchant publication calling for revolution through female alliance, legal expert Diane L.

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In her trenchant and brilliantly written collection of essays in The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century Amia Srinivasan examines the positions taken by of different strands

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“food for thought as to how much things have changed, and how much they have stayed the same, or in some cases appear to be returning.”

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New Women of Empire is never less than a fascinating read, and many of these chapter case studies could well be expanded for fuller publication.”

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One reads Miguel Missé’s The Myth of the Wrong Body with growing excitement and thumping of the air not just because of one’s sympathy with its content, but also because of his sociologica

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Aware of the controversy and skepticism surrounding bisexuality, the author Julia Shaw, herself bisexual, sets out to trace the lineage of this condition that she insists is not “mysterious, threat

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Unshaved: Resistance and Revolution in Women’s Body Hair Politics deals with compliance with cultural norms of body hair removal—largely on the basis of data from American women— and the e

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Miranda Seymour has produced a detailed and exhaustive account of the life of novelist Jean Rhys on the basis of her short stories, novels, and an unfinished autobiography, Smile Please, w

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Heyam has gone a long way to realizing their ambition to ‘open up space for so many more new ways to relate to gender . . .

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“Horowitz has pieced together a fascinating story of a woman who ‘lied all her life’ and died in 1954 at the age of 86 in a Hove nursing home, taking her secrets with her.”

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Challenges to Darwin’s view of the sexes are no longer a minority sport, though like all challenges to received opinion they have difficulty being heard in the Establishment they wish to rock.

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The ostensible template for these 24 musings on “singlehood” is Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 cult classic, Sex and the Single Girl.

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“a fascinating book written with style and passion and deserves the widest possible readership.”

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Manifesting Justice will repay the very determined reader, and there are many shocking moments where the law is revealed to be, to an almost unbelievable extent, an ass.”

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This is a very engaging, lucidly written, and entertaining collection of autobiographical essays produced by debutante Myanmar writer, Moe Thet War, writing as is stated, as Pyae Moe Thet War.

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Girls Can Kiss Now by Jill Gutowitz has been greeted with rapturous anticipation by a range of American publications and blogs, Vogue, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Bustle, Electric L

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The King’s Painter is an outstanding publication that requires and repays a very close and careful reading.”

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In her most recent collection of essays, Siri Hustvedt provides a feminist analysis of a range of materials drawn from her own family life (particularly the intimate relationships with her grandmot

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“This is a long but never less than gripping book, though the rich examples are stronger than the analysis they feed.”

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“Schuller has produced a work of impressive scholarship and research, from which many readers and students will benefit, though the rich and complex material she has assembled seems to dema

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This is an enthralling and deceptively small book built around, at first sight, a rather unpromising story line concerning the prolonged struggles of a skinny, underweight boy against the efforts o

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This gorgeously produced book is a baby photo album with one major difference. All the Dads are gay men, married or single, who have become parents through surrogacy or by adoption.

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“Williams reflects . . . on an issue contentious for feminists and other women, namely her sexuality: ‘And one last thing.

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This powerful little book belongs to the Object Lessons series described by one admirer in the flyleaf as “the most consistently interesting non-fiction book series in America” (Megan Volpert,

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Meeting in Positano: A Novel by Goliarda Sapienza (1924–1996) is a disorienting experience for anyone who likes their fact and fiction to be distinct genres.

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The author, Krys Malcolm Belc, is a nonbinary, transmasculine parent who shares his journey from giving birth to his son, to his decision two years later to take testosterone therapy, and to becomi

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“an exquisite, engrossing, and very moving book.”

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In her enthralling book Emily Midorikawa tells the stories of women, many from modest backgrounds in the US and the UK, who parlayed their alleged communications with the spirit world into social,

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The clichéd assessment “compulsively readable” seems the most appropriate response to Andrew Morton’s 385-page book on the Windsor sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret.

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In 2017, at 28 years of age Gabrielle Korn was the youngest Editor-in-Chief of an independent international digital publication called Nylon; she knew herself to be “younger and gayer than

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This little book is as candid and charming as its cover, and not coincidentally the kind of book its author, Lennie Goodings, likes best.

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Koa Beck’s book, White Feminism: From Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind, comes with a rather double- or even triple-edged endorsement from Gloria Steinem; “Don’t judge

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Carol Hay notes in her preface the current buzz of conversation around feminism, crediting the #MeToo movement with “laying bare the elephant in the room, skeletons burst from closets, dirty laundr

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The title echoes Virginia Woolf’s non-negotiable insistence that a woman writer needs a “room of one’s own,” and at the same time reflects one of the academic detours that Rita Colwell took when bl

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In her Introduction Helen Lewis defines what “difficult” means when applied to the feminist pioneers whose struggles she reviews and admires.

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Katie Roiphe is noted for her trenchant and often controversial views on all things feminist.

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Broadside: A Feminist Review was a “groundbreaking” Canadian feminist newspaper published between 1979 and 1989.

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“The reader should be prepared for an extraordinary though long and very uneven ride.”

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“What a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of a hypothesis!”
—Mary Wollstonecraft

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“Block’s book demonstrates the urgent need for some progress . . .”

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“Seen against the complex backdrop of her family circumstances, the machinations of literary London, and changing social mores that made a ‘female Byron’ no longer socially acceptable, L.E.

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In this lively and capacious volume Katie Hickman sets out to show that English women in India were a much more diverse group than the popular image of the “Memsahib” would suggest, though unsurpri

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Lean Out: The Truth About Women, Power and the Workplace though  purporting initially not to be about Sheryl Sandberg and her well-known treatise Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to

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“The stories presented here constitute a further step in dispelling negative stereotypes and in enabling gay men of these three generations to own their dignity.”

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“‘Armed with cool, nerdy facts’ the reader will be able to discuss language as an entry point into larger ideas of gender equality.”

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“even readers already somewhat familiar with Sulak’s extraordinary life will find many things here to engage and surprise.”

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“This is an enchanting and unforgettable little book, beautifully written and translated, which brings Stefania vividly to life.”

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“there is much to instruct and delight in the delineation of the ways in which the lives of these unusual women are reflected in their work.”

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In a rather lengthy introduction Orgad justifies her choosing as her study population privileged, educated, heterosexual, mostly middle class, mostly white, full-time stay-at-home mothers in single

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The author begins this book “hip-deep in the chaos that is modern American motherhood” but hastily clarifies that, while her own experience provided the impetus to write the book, it is not autobio

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Forgotten Women: The Artists is part of a “brand new series, which will uncover the lost histories of the women who, over thousands of years have refused to accept the hand they were dealt

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“a fascinating read for anyone interested in fin-de –siècle Parisian society . . .”

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Ben Barres’ autobiography is a matter-of-fact record of a very unusual life, and was completed shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in December 2017.  Barbara Barres—as Ben was born in 1

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“Even within its self-imposed limitations this book could have done much more justice to its allegedly dangerous subject matter.”

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Any reader of the magazine Vanity Fair particularly in the 80’s will be familiar with the glittering cast of celebrities, including celebrity villains, parading the pages of The Vanity

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This collaborative collection of comics representing a variety of voices and experiences was sparked by the concern that under President Trump abortion rights and other aspects of Obamacare would b

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In Fifty Million Rising: The New Generation of Working Women Transforming the Muslim World Saadia Zahidi provides a welcome corrective to the dominant mage of “the tired story of the downt

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In Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World’s Next Superpower, Roseann Lake, who worked at a television station in Beijing, provides us with a new angle on the usual narrati

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With its cover image of an eroticized version of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring this book would draw the eye on any coffee table, though what this  image says in terms of Grace Banks’

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Halberstam begins his “quirky” text with a tribute to David Bowie, whose gendered appearance “part man, part woman, part space alien” inspires his reflections on the relationship between sex, gende

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"a delicious little book packed with erudition and pleasure . . ."

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Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize winner and a specialist in early modern literature, explores in The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve the enduring fascination of the Genesis story

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“This courageous memoir is a worthy addition to the growing trans canon.”

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This lively little book comes with an endorsement from Gloria Steinem who most memorably addressed this issue in the October 1978 issue of Ms.

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“an extremely interesting approach and a much-needed paradigm shift in the treatment of racialized trauma . . .”

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Although described as a publication of general interest How to Understand Your Gender is primarily directed to people pondering their own trangender/non-binary/gender diverse iden

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The Sarcasm Handbook expands Lawrence Dorfman’s already very considerable range beyond his bestselling series on Snark.

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"an engaging idea that does not quite achieve its aim . . ."

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DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution is described in the Authors’ Note as an “unabashedly personal view both of the history and the issues.” The co-authors also stress that book repres

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Anyone interested in gender equality is by now used to Rwanda coming very high on the international gender scoreboards.

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This timely publication addresses much of the misinformation about the trans community that persists despite increasing media coverage both popular and serious.

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For dedicated fans of Richard Russo these four stories mark a break with his usual “blue-collar” territory.

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Inheritance from Mother is a novel for the connoisseur by an author regarded as one of the most important writers in Japan today.

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This is a brilliant, erudite and very readable book exposing how Jane Austen, while seemingly embroidering the small domestic canvas with which we are all familiar, was in fact deliberately using h

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Camille Paglia’s relentlessly controversial public persona and pronouncements tend to overshadow her actual work.

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Perry’s skewering of evolutionary rationales to explain and justify gender inequalities should keep us going for a while.”

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The focus of this book is “the use of employment law and practices in the United States to exclude gay people from public social spaces.” The book focuses on discrimination in the U.S.

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This book presents itself as the “coming out” of Bennett and her Feminist Fight Club, a girl gang that banded together in 2009 to develop strategies for dealing with “sneaky micro-aggressions and o

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“Overall the book achieves its aim most efficiently and pleasurably, serving as an introduction to the academic world of Queer Theory . . .”

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This is an important book on an important subject, but not for the faint-hearted in its very detailed treatment of the ebb and flow of citizenship recognition and rights for LGBT individuals in Ame

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“an entirely convincing portrait of an entirely unconventional and brilliant individual.”

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In Sex Object: A Memoir Jessica Valenti, a feminist writer and commentator, chronicles her teenage and young adult years of sexual harassment on the streets and in the subways of New York.

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Few right-thinking people would question Maya Angelou’s status as an author, historian, intellectual, poet, social commentator, activist, and genuine Renaissance person.

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Labor of Love: the Invention of Dating is the witty title of Moira Weigel’s entertaining history of “dating” in the U.S.

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“MariNaomi does not disappoint her many fans.”

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Andi Zeisler, cofounder and creative director of the non-profit organization Bitch Media, sets out her stall in her introduction, reminding us that the point of the magazine Bitch was “to

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Described as a novel, this formidable example of that increasingly popular genre—biographical fiction—tells the life of the brilliant and celebrated 19th century English novelist George Eliot (1819

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The subtitle of Brooke Hauser’s new biography of Helen Gurley Brown—The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman—is well chosen.

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The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye “presented by” Sonny Liew is a collector’s item—like a good wine or a piece of fine, old furniture—in its beautiful and artfully aged presentation; and al

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Described as a “fictional recreation” The Dig tells the story of the excavation of the famed Sutton Hoo burial site in Suffolk, the findings of which now have pride of place and a permanen

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This slipcased two-volume edition contains the unique issue of It Aint Me Babe (1970) and 17 issues of Wimmen’s Comix produced between 1972 and 1992—all of which are now out of pr

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The well-known author and biographer, Claire Harman, has given us what could be the definitive biography on Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855).

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This book addresses the issue of societal transformation “from male to female dominance” drawing on a range of statistical sources, publications, and anecdotal experiences, plus eight stories “from

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Curvology purports to take us on “a scientific journey into the evolution of women’s bodies and what that means for their brains.” Engagingly, David Bainbridge attempts to diffuse the unea

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This happy little stocking-filler is based on Sarah Galvin’s writing a column called "Wedding Crasher" for The Stranger newspaper in Seattle.

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The basic thesis of this book, which modestly sets out to present a “science in the making,” is that “scarcity is not just a physical constraint.

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This is an engaging idea for a book engagingly written.

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If you are an appreciative reader of Adam Kirschs’ articles and reviews in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere you

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This is a book that can be read as an amazing story of high altitude climbing, skiing, ballooning, and biathlon: and as a commentary on the Great Questions of Our Time, relative to gender stereotyp

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“. . . no doubt it will please the loyal fan market to which it is directed.”  

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In The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism and the Reality of the Biological Clock Tanya Selvaratnam presents her own story of “heartbreak and self-discovery” relative to her attempts to become

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In the introduction to her book The XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World Alison Wolf states that “until now all women’s lives, whether rich or poor,

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“. . . exciting, provocative, and even dangerous . . .”

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“. . . thoroughly researched, cogently argued, and elegantly expressed . . .”

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A new publication by Jung Chang the author of the bestselling Wild Swans is always going to be an event, and the Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China seem

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Kat George’s Pink Bits is an example of the growing volume of media products—books, blogs, films, television shows—produced by young women primarily for a specific demographic of girls and

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This entertaining and well-structured book is an ethnography of the New Domesticity movement which the author sees as sweeping America.