This book, Beyond Interviews: Exploring Changes in Women’s Lives and Politics (1970-2008), examines the life trajectories and social and political views and behaviors of a diverse group of thirteen women I interviewed four times--from their junior year in high school in 1970 through their mid-fifties in 2008. As a group, they were part of a distinctive generational cohort. However, as juniors, the young women’s educational and political views and participation in protest activity varied si...

This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl--and a young woman--trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the difference.Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism...

An Improbable Friendship is the dual biography of Israeli Ruth Dayan, now ninety-eight, who was Moshe Dayan’s wife for thirty-seven years, and Palestinian journalist Raymonda Tawil, Yasser Arafat’s mother-in-law, now seventy-four. It reveals for the first time the two women’s surprising and secret forty-year friendship and delivers the story of their extraordinary and turbulent lives growing up in a war-torn country.Based on personal interviews, diaries, and journals drawn...

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That American...

Eight years after the Taliban was ousted from government, an insurgency rages in Afghanistan, drug barons and war lords rule the turf, and the truth remains unspoken. In Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots: The Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan's Women, author Sally Armstrong confronts unspoken truths and unravels the threads that are strangling Afghanistan's attempts to join the twenty-first century. A veteran reporter, Armstrong interviews women and girls from all walks of life, focusing on the chan...

A secular feminist army courageously challenges the Islamic StateIn war-torn northern Syria, a democratic society—based on secularism, ethnic inclusiveness, and gender equality—has won significant victories against the Islamic State, or Daesh, with women on the front lines as fierce warriors and leaders.A Road Unforeseen recounts the dramatic, underreported history of the Rojava Kurds, whose all-women militia was instrumental in the perilo...

A new biography of Nancy Astor, American socialite and social crusader who blazed a trail through British society amid two World WarsIn 1919, Nancy Astor became the first female Member of Parliament elected to the House of Commons—she was not what had been expected. Far from a virago who had suffered for the cause of female suffrage, Lady Astor was already near the center of the ruling society that had for so long resisted the political upheavals of the early twentieth century, havi...

An outspoken centrist, Senator Snowe stunned Washington in February 2012 when she announced she would not seek a fourth term and offered a sharp rebuke to the Senate, citing the dispiriting gridlock and polarization. After serving in the legislative branch at the state and federal levels for 40 years, including 18 years in the U.S. Senate, she explained that Washington wasn’t solving the big problems anymore.In this timely call to action, she explores the roots of her belief in pri...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anna Quindlen comes “a splendid collection” of short essays that are “eloquent, powerful, compassionate, and droll” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer)“Quindlen writes with rare insight, intelligence, and wit. Most of all she writes from the heart.”—The Buffalo NewsThinking out loud is what Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen does best in this collection of h...

The inspiring true story of Josephine Reynolds, Britain's first full-time female firefighter.When Josephine Reynolds signed up with the Norfolk Fire Service in July 1982 at just seventeen years old, there was no such thing as a firefighter – only fire men. Set against the slate-grey backdrop of early 1980s Britain, Fire Woman is the story of how a young woman brought up in rural Wales coped in the testosterone-fuelled world of the fire brigade, wh...

In the presidential election of 2008 America seemed ready to elevate a woman to the presidency or vice presidency and—with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin—was on the verge of actually doing so. Words like inevitable and phenomenon were in the air and the political and cultural stars seemed to be aligned.Why didn’t it happen? What will it take to make it happen soon?In a probing analysis sure to ignite controversy, acclaimed White House correspondent Anne Kornblut argues tha...

It’s already passé to ask if parity is important for today’s Canada. What’s needed now is to ask how we can make sure more women run for office and that they’re well-represented in government. There are no easy answers to this, but it’s clear that half-measures just won’t do. Pascale Navarro argues that quotas are essential for women to achieve parity with men in politics. Over a hundred other nations worldwide have already established parity as a goal. What are we waiting for?