Here are 100 books that Backlash fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a veteran business and finance journalist, I’ve always been amazed at the huge gender gap that still exists in so many parts of the economy and society despite all the strides we’ve ostensibly made. When I became a mother, it became even clearer to me that gender norms are still so entrenched in culture and still have a huge bearing on women’s economic and professional lives. I’ve written about this topic for a whole host of publications, from the BBC to The Washington Post. I have an MBA from Columbia Business School and am an associate Instructor in the Strategic Communications program at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies.
I read this book in a single day and was captivated by the way in which Sieghart combined narrative storytelling with deep-rooted research and analysis.
To me, the book makes a crystal-clear case that many of the gender gaps we contend with today actually begin with the authority gap: the fact that women are trusted less than men and are considered less credible.
Sieghart does a fantastic job of making complex research accessible and digestible.
Every woman has a story of being underestimated, ignored, challenged, or patronized in the workplace. Maybe she tried to speak up in a meeting, only to be talked over by male colleagues. Or a client addressed her male subordinate instead of her. These stories remain true even for women at the top of their fields; in the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, female justices are interrupted four times more often than their male colleagues-and 96 percent of the time by men. Despite the progress we've made toward equality, we still fail, more often than we might realize, to take women…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a writer who has spent my entire reading life emersed in the past, reading everything from Russian literature, to nineteenth-century English, to early modern American. It’s no surprise I became a historical fiction novelist. The 1950s is one of my favorite eras to write about because of its complexity. The glamour of the Golden Age and the dark truths it represents make for compelling reads. I hope you love the list below as much as I do.
This one is pure fun. It’s hard to believe no one thought to make a female chemist the star of a cooking show before! The story is witty and original, artfully combining the hard truths of being a scientist and a TV personality in male-dominated fields, with femininity and motherhood.
Sexism is rampant (obviously, it’s the 1950s), and the challenges the protagonist faces often seem insurmountable. Garmus takes these difficult themes seriously, while delivering them with humor and a lightheartedness that makes for a refreshing read.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • Meet Elizabeth Zott: a “formidable, unapologetic and inspiring” (PARADE) scientist in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show in this novel that is “irresistible, satisfying and full of fuel. It reminds you that change takes time and always requires heat” (The New York Times Book Review).
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Oprah Daily, Newsweek, GoodReads
"A unique heroine ... you'll find yourself wishing she wasn’t fictional." —Seattle Times…
As a veteran business and finance journalist, I’ve always been amazed at the huge gender gap that still exists in so many parts of the economy and society despite all the strides we’ve ostensibly made. When I became a mother, it became even clearer to me that gender norms are still so entrenched in culture and still have a huge bearing on women’s economic and professional lives. I’ve written about this topic for a whole host of publications, from the BBC to The Washington Post. I have an MBA from Columbia Business School and am an associate Instructor in the Strategic Communications program at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies.
I loved this book because it simultaneously gives us a taste of the fierce spirit of the women’s liberation movement but also demonstrates what was wrong with Friedan’s particular flavor of feminism at the time: namely, that it was centered around white and mostly privileged women.
Reading this book is like being transported back to the 1960s and being a fly on the wall in the homes of women who were done with the patriarchy, who wanted to have careers and earn money, but were also grappling with their own roles in society.
It’s a historical document but also, in some ways, the 1960s equivalent of reality TV. It’s a ferocious cri de coeur that is delightful in its assertiveness.
Landmark, groundbreaking, classic-these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of "the problem that has no name": the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women's confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle,…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I grew up in Scotland, and from the moment I visited New York City as a tourist, I have been obsessed! I moved to NYC officially in 2000 and have been endlessly fascinated by its history. As a new immigrant who moved here knowing no one and having very little money, I struggled a lot in my initial years, and that left me wondering how people, particularly women, had survived being in the City in prior years, especially with less privileges than I had and so many more obstacles in their way to making a living. I hope these books give you the insight they gave me.
I had always been aware of the story of Madame Restell, but I always wanted to read something more detailed about her, especially that wasn’t judgmental of her career. Because she was a female physician (mainly known for her abortion services) operating in the 1840s until 1875, her story has often been distorted and sensationalized.
I loved that Wright gave more context to her story and brought it to life through the environmental details of the era. She also emphasized the urgency of the story, particularly the historical moment we are currently living in. Mired in controversy for most of her life, Madame Restell (born Ann Trow Lohman) is a character that Wright renders in a compelling, sympathetic, and human manner.
**Longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Nonfiction (2023)**
**An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF 2023 SO FAR in BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR and HISTORY**
**An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH (March 2023)**
**A Bookshop.Org EDITOR'S PICK (March 2023)**
“This is the story of one of the boldest women in American history: self-made millionaire, a celebrity in her era, a woman beloved by her patients and despised by the men who wanted to control them.”
An industrious immigrant who built her business from the ground up, Madame Restell was a self-taught surgeon on the cutting…
When I went to law school, so many of the stories we heard in class treated men’s experiences as the ordinary baseline and women’s experiences as something to skip over or briefly mention as a footnote. This narrow perspective warps our understanding of the past, present, and future, and helps perpetuate women’s inequality. I have been studying and writing about sex discrimination for more than two decades. I wanted to write a book that included women in the center of American law and history. In the process, I learned about scores of fascinating women who Americans know too little about or forget entirely.
I would not describe this book as a personal favorite, but I do think anyone interested in women’s history and women’s rights should read it. Schlafly was the driving force behind the movement to stop ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Her 1977 anti-feminist manifesto simultaneously argues that the ERA is unnecessary because America has supposedly established women’s equality and that the ERA is threatening because it would take women out of the home. Schlafly outlined a playbook that decades of anti-feminists have followed to the present day.
Phyllis Schlafly is a constitutional attorney and president of Eagle Forum, a leading fighter for pro-family politics and agendas. This book is her reflections on the sexual liberations and other feminist's ideas in comparison to how she has lived. She demonstrates through her life that it was by living a Christian life of devotion and motherhood that she was to be "liberated." The book provides criticism and arguments against radical feminism. Betty Freidan once said over the radio, "I would like to burn her [Phyllis Schlafly] at the stake." It takes much courage for any individual to stand up against…
My work over the past four decades has been to promote women’s rights, end violence against women, promote social justice, and positively transform the lives of men. I’ve worked extensively with the United Nations; presidents, prime ministers, and governments; companies and unions; NGOs and educators in fifty countries. I continue to be inspired by the many incredible people I get to meet. In addition to my talks to communities, companies, and universities, my activism, and my books on this subject, I also write fiction, most recently my mystery The Last Exit.
The rise of far-right movements and the attempts to roll back the rights of all women and the basic civil rights of Black people have been fueled by angry white men. Michael Kimmel’s brilliant book is a powerful critique of the hateful beliefs and actions of these men, but manages to speak about them with empathy. Because he also interviews men who have left neo-Nazi organizations, he leaves us with a very hopeful message.
We hear them on talk radio airwaves bellowing about minorities. We watch them organize anti-immigration demonstrations on the border. We read their opinions regarding the demise of white male privilege. And sometimes, tragically, we witness their aggression through vigilante violence, as in the cases of Wade Michael Page, James Eagan Holmes, Elliot Rodger, George Zimmerman, and many more. They are America's angry white men, including "men's rights" activists who think white men are the victims of discrimination, as well as members of the "white wing" of the rightward fringes of the American political spectrum. Why are they so angry?
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I've been working on questions of identity and history for more than thirty years. It's a very personal topic for me, as I come from a working-class background – something that I was acutely aware of throughout my school and university education, where people of my background were comparatively rare. History in my view has the power to construct essentialist identities that exclude and are potentially deadly. But history also has the power to critically question this essentialism and contribute to a more tolerant, open-minded, and self-reflective society. Hence, as a historian, I've been trying to support and strengthen an engaged and enlightened historiography that bolsters a range of progressive identifications without leading to essentialist constructions of collective identities.
Women’s emancipation has made substantial strides in many parts of the global west since the 1970s. Yet, despite the fact that women still remain disadvantaged and discriminated against in many spheres of life, there has been, more recently, a powerful backlash against feminist ideas and practices. Nowhere is this more visible than in the populist right-wing movements that have merged anti-feminist, racist, and national discourses to provide a powerful ideological mix of masculinist identity politics that attacks gender and sexual diversity and seeks to influence sex education in schools. This book analyzes these discourses but it also provides intriguing insights into why somethings women are attracted to anti-feminist new right populisms.
While research in right-wing populism has recently been blossoming, a systematic study of the intersection of right-wing populism and gender is still missing, even though gender issues are ubiquitous in discourses of the radical right ranging from "ethnosexism" against immigrants, to "anti-genderism." This volume shows that the intersectionality of gender, race and class is constitutional for radical right discourse. From different European perspectives, the contributions investigate the ways in which gender is used as a meta-language, strategic tool and "affective bridge" for ordering and hierarchizing political objectives in the discourse of the diverse actors of the "right-wing complex."
As a feminist academic and activist, I am personally committed to the cause of reproductive freedom. Professionally, I've spent the past seven years carrying out research on abortion pills and their travels around the globe. This research involved more than eighty interviews with activists and doctors across the world, as well as analysis of many different text sources. My work has also taken me into activist spaces across Europe, as a volunteer with the Abortion Support Network. Although I entered the topic of reproductive rights through my interest in abortion, reading widely in the field has led me to pursue research interests in reproductive and biomedical technologies in other areas of sexual and reproductive health.
Today, struggles for abortion access are usually focused on legislatures and courts. These can seem like the only avenues for achieving change.
Yet Seizing the Means of Reproduction gives us an alternative picture of reproductive health and abortion politics, by exploring the history of the women’s health movement in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s.
Activists in this movement saw doctors and hospitals as powerful male-dominated institutions that exerted too much power over women’s bodies. In response, the activists developed new models for practicing reproductive health to give people power over their own bodies and reproductive activities. Self-managed abortion was one important part of their work, and Murphy’s book explores this history in lively detail.
The activists in Murphy’s narrative built their own self-help groups and resources outside of mainstream medical institutions, deliberately, because they saw this as the pathway for achieving women’s emancipation.
In Seizing the Means of Reproduction, Michelle Murphy's initial focus on the alternative health practices developed by radical feminists in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s opens into a sophisticated analysis of the transnational entanglements of American empire, population control, neoliberalism, and late-twentieth-century feminisms. Murphy concentrates on the technoscientific means-the technologies, practices, protocols, and processes-developed by feminist health activists. She argues that by politicizing the technical details of reproductive health, alternative feminist practices aimed at empowering women were also integral to late-twentieth-century biopolitics.
Murphy traces the transnational circulation of cheap, do-it-yourself health interventions, highlighting the uneasy links between…
I’m a fiction writer interested in exploring big historical moments through the lives of ordinary people. The extensive fight for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy for women, specifically black women, has long been a concern, admittedly for selfish reasons. This ever-shifting terrain—from eugenics and sterilization to coerced birth control and the rise in maternal mortality rates—was initially perplexing to me and it took a great deal of reading to make sense of it. Such research not only informed my historical novel, Night Wherever We Go, but much of how I understand the world. I’d argue one can’t fully comprehend the current abortion rights moment without understanding how race and reproduction are so deeply intertwined.
This account of Smith’s lauded 35-year career as a midwife in rural Alabama is fascinating.
What I appreciate about this book most is how it maps out the growing tensions that developed between African-American lay midwives and the medical establishment, once the Department of Labor began to regulate midwifery practices in the early twentieth century.
From increased scrutinization and criminalization of folk traditions, like medicinal teas and oil massages, licensed midwives with clinical training found themselves hamstrung by increasing regulation, until they were pushed out of the field altogether in the late 1970s.
The vacuum of maternal healthcare left in their wake has been devastating. Such that, we’re still seeing repercussions to this day.
Margaret Charles Smith, a ninety-one-year-old Alabama midwife, has thousands of birthing stories to tell. Sifting through nearly five decades of providing care for women in rural Greene County, she relates the tales that capture the life-and-death struggle of the birthing experience and the traditions, pharmacopeia, and spiritual attitudes that influenced her practice. She debunks images of the complacent southern “granny” midwife and honors the determination, talent, and complexity of midwifery.
Fascinating to read, this book is part of the new genre of writing that recognizes the credibility of midwives who have emerged from their own communities and were educated through…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am an internationally recognised wellbeing and health writer, accredited stress and performance coach, and originally trained, qualified, and worked as a state registered nurse in the UK. I am also the author of numerous health-related books published internationally, including I Want to Be Calm and I Want to Sleep.
Originally published in 2002, the author took a revolutionary approach to burnout, suggesting that burnout could be an opportunity for making overdue changes rather than a reason to panic. Ignoring the warning signs of burnout, feeling exhausted, frustrated, empty, disconnected, spent, or cynical will ultimately lead to a state of collapse, but listening to the message of burnout and exploring life alternatives will enable you to make beneficial changes. One of the founders of Skyros Holistic Holidays in Greece, psychotherapist and imagework practitioner Glouberman promotes alternative ways of living and being that actively promote psychological health.
Are you feeling exhausted, hollow, cynical, trapped, angry or just not there? Working harder but getting less done? Ill too often or for too long? Or do you know someone else who feels like this?These are some of the classic warning signs of burnout. More importantly they hold out the promise of a whole new life. In this ground breaking book Dr Dina Glouberman, visionary co-founder of the Skyros holistic health holidays, demonstrates that burnout happens at work or at home when the meaning goes out of what we are doing but we have too much invested to stop and…
