Here are 100 books that The Power of the Positive Woman fans have personally recommended if you like
The Power of the Positive Woman.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
When I went to law school, so many of the stories we heard in class treated menâs experiences as the ordinary baseline and womenâs 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 womenâs 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.
Another common misconception is that the Nineteenth Amendment extended the vote to all American women. In fact, many womenâespecially women of colorâremained disenfranchised after the Amendmentâs ratification in 1920.
Jonesâs engaging book tells the story of the black women who continued to fight for enfranchisement and equal rights for decades after the Amendment.
âAn elegant and expansive historyâ (New YorkTimes)of African American womenâs pursuit of political powerâand how it transformed America   InVanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American womenâs political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work ofBlackwomenâMaria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and moreâwhoâŚ
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 runâŚ
When I went to law school, so many of the stories we heard in class treated menâs experiences as the ordinary baseline and womenâs 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 womenâs 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.
Catt led the largest woman suffrage organization in the United States during the final push for the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibited sex-based denials of the franchise. Too often, dominant accounts of how women got the vote describe the Nineteenth Amendment as a gift from men to women.
Cattâs 1923 book makes clear that winning the Nineteenth Amendment was a multigenerational battle that required mobilized women to overcome ferocious opposition.
"A political combat memoir like no other, suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt takes us to the front lines of the Votes for Women battlefields â in the states and in Congress â as American women fight for the franchise. With candor and flashes of wry humor, Catt offers sharp insights into the social, political, and economic forces arrayed against her cause, revealing the strategies that finally brought the suffragists' seven-decade campaign to dramatic victory. Woman Suffrage and Politics is not only a fascinating firsthand account of a major civil rights struggle, but a valuable guidebook for todayâs political activists." ââŚ
When I went to law school, so many of the stories we heard in class treated menâs experiences as the ordinary baseline and womenâs 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 womenâs 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.
Johnson was Jack Kerouacâs girlfriend, before and after On the Road (1957) made Kerouac a Beatnik star. I love Johnsonâs memoir because she expands the story of the writers and artists in the so-called Beat Generation to include women who mainstream accounts either ignore or treat as âminor characters.â
In my view, Johnson also demonstrates that she is a better writer than Kerouac, who tended to ramble. Some of her passages have stuck in my head for decades.
Named one of the 50 best memoirs of the past 50 years by The New York Times
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
âAmong the great American literary memoirs of the past century . . . a riveting portrait of an era . . . Johnson captures this period with deep clarity and moving insight.â â Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In 1954, Joyce Johnsonâs Barnard professor told his class that most women could never have the kinds of experiences that would be worth writing about. Attitudes like that were not at all unusual at a timeâŚ
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 sheâŚ
When I went to law school, so many of the stories we heard in class treated menâs experiences as the ordinary baseline and womenâs 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 womenâs 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.
What if Hillary Rodham had not married Bill Clinton? In Sittenfeldâs reimagining of American history, Bill never becomes president, but Hillary does.
I am including this work of fiction both because the novel is a page-turner and because there is no nonfiction book featuring a female president of the United States. More than a century after the Nineteenth Amendment, our line of male presidents remains unbroken.
BY THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ROMANTIC COMEDY, AMERICAN WIFE and PREP
'This addictive novel is the SLIDING DOORS of American politics. Gripping' Stylist
'Startlingly good. One of my favourite writers' KATE ATKINSON ---------------------- 'Awfully opinionated for a girl' is what they call Hillary as she grows up in her Chicago suburb.
Smart, diligent, and a bit plain, that's the general consensus. Then Hillary goes to college, and her star rises. At Yale Law School, she continues to be a leader - and catches the eye of driven, handsome and charismatic Bill. But when he asks her to marryâŚ
As a veteran business and finance journalist, Iâve always been amazed at the huge gender gap that still exists in so many parts of the economy and society despite all the strides weâve 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 womenâs economic and professional lives. Iâve 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 Columbiaâs School of Professional Studies.
I was fascinated by Susan Faludiâs book as a haunting explanation of why womenâs empowerment has stalled so dramatically over the past few decades.
Faludi does an amazing job of weaving a narrative that is as rich in information as it is absorbing, and I think this book is as important to read today as it was in 1991, when it was first published.
Itâs enraging and inspiring, but more than anything, itâs a critical book to read for anyone who wants to understand the complex and ever-changing dynamics between gender, power, and money.Â
A new edition of the feminist classic, with an all-new introduction exploring the role of backlash in the 2016 election and laying out a path forward for 2020 and beyond
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award â˘Â âEnraging, enlightening, and invigorating, Backlash is, most of all, true.ââNewsday
First published in 1991, Backlash made headlines and became a bestselling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decadelong antifeminist backlash against womenâs advances. A Pulitzer Prizeâwinning journalist, Susan Faludi brilliantly deconstructed the reigning myths about the âcostsâ of womenâs independenceâfrom the supposed âman shortageâ to the âinfertility epidemicâ to âcareerâŚ
I am a writer and an internationally recognized communications expert who grew up poor, homeless, and oppressed by fear and violence. I am a woman who crashed through the glass ceiling and had an exciting career with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency where I became a leader on the international stage. During my troubled times growing up, I fantasized about being an elite operative who got the bad guys and traveled the world. Thatâs why I wrote about one. I know how hard it is to be a strong woman. Thatâs why I celebrate them.Â
The diversity in this feminist collection pushed me to open my mind. It didnât allow me to accept there is only one way to be a feminist. Through the brave unconventionality of the stories, I saw how women see their connection to society, to the world, in different ways. I heard strong voices: creative, brilliant, and courageous ones. One of my favorite stories was L. Timmel Duchampâs "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A". It kept me gripped and fascinated by what it didnât say.Â
Sisters of the Revolution gathers a highly curated selection of feminist speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more) chosen by one of the most respected editorial teams in speculative literature today, the award-winning Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Including stories from the 1970s to the present day, the collection seeks to expand the conversation about feminism while engaging the reader in a wealth of imaginative ideas.
From the literary heft of Angela Carter to the searing power of Octavia Butler, Sisters of the Revolution gathers daring examples of speculative fictionâs engagement with feminism. Dark, satirical stories such as Eileen GunnâsâŚ
A fake date, romance, and a conniving co-worker you'd love to shut down. Fun summer reading!
Liza loves helping people and creating designer shoes that feel as good as they look. Financially overextended and recovering from a divorce, her last-ditch opportunity to pitch her firm for investment falls flat. ThenâŚ
I have loved history since I was a girl, visiting my grandparents in Virginia and reading American Girl books. I began to focus on womenâs history when I learned in college just how much the womenâs movement of the generation before mine had made my life possible. So much changed for American women in the ten years before I was born, and I wanted to know how that happened and how it fit into the broader political changes. That connection, between women making change and the bigger political scene, remains the core of my research. I have a B.A. in history and English from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia.
Levensteinâs subtitle says it all: we generally donât think there was a â90s feminism. Her book pairs especially well with the others on this list, because it demonstrates how women of color took the lead in an intersectional feminism that focused on a huge range of issues at the end of the 20th century. Itâs also a great read about the role of the early internet in 1990s feminist organizing. If you think social media was the first time computer technology shaped grassroots activism, her chapter on technology alone will blow your mind.
On January 21, 2017, massive demonstrations in Washington DC and sister marches held in over 600 American cities drew crowds of over four million people. Popularly called 'The Women's March,' it became the largest single-day protest in American history. The feminism that shaped the consciousness of millions in 2017 had distinct roots in the 1990s.
In They Didn't See Us Coming, historian Lisa Levenstein argues we have missed much of the past quarter century of the women's movement because the conventional wisdom is that the '90s was the moment when the movement splintered into competing factions. But by showcasing voicesâŚ
I grew up rebelling against the roles I was expected to take on as a girl. I grew up not knowing that girls could fall in love with girls. I grew up with a strong sense of injustice and a desire to do something about it. The books on my list all feature strong female protagonists experiencing and/or taking on injustices of one kind or another. They are written by interesting women who write brilliantly. Some of the books are dear to me because nature provides comfort and strength beneath the chaos of human chatter, as it does for me.
I read this book before Iâd found words to describe the impact on my teenage self of living in a patriarchal world that didnât allow me to do things I wanted to because I was a girlâand that insisted I do things I didnât want to. I read it before Iâd heard the word feminist used other than as an insult. But the essentially feminist spirit of the novel touched me deeply.Â
I raced through the book, hoping that this single mother whoâd fled an alcoholic and abusive husband with her child would make it out alive, that sheâd find her people, and that sheâd get justice. Years later, I saw the book described as the first feminist novel, and for good reasonâwritten in Victorian England, no less.Â
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
A beautiful edition of Anne Bronte's most enduring novel, to accompany her sisters' greatest books in Penguin Clothbound Classics.
Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that theâŚ
I am an anthropologist who has written or edited more than a dozen books on topics that range from the lives of trans sex workers, to the anthropology of fat. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Scandinavia. I work at Uppsala University in Sweden, where I am a Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, and where I direct a research program titled Engaging Vulnerability.
This recently published excavation of Simone de BeauvoirâsThe Second Sex is almost as thick as Beauvoirâs massive tract, but donât let that put you off. The photo of Beauvoir on the cover conveys an insouciant âYeah, sureâ attitude, and Meryl Atman uncannily channels that sentiment into a dazzlingly authoritative and entertaining discussion of why the overwhelming majority of the criticism of Beauvoirâs famous tome happens to be misguided and wrong. The book is about gender, race, sexuality, class, and privilege, but it isnât a polemic. It is an exercise in critical reading at its most invigorating.
Beauvoir in Time situates Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex in the historical context of its writing and in later contexts of its international reception, from then till now. The book takes up three aspects of Beauvoir's work more recent feminists find embarrassing: "bad sex," "dated" views about lesbians, and intersections with race and class. Through close reading of Beauvoir's writing in many genres, alongside contemporaneous discourses (good and bad novels in French and English, outmoded psychoanalytic and sexological authorities, ethnographic surrealism, the writing of Richard Wright and Franz Fanon), and in light of her travels to the U.S. andâŚ
âRowdyâ Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouseâŚ
I left my hometown of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, at age 18 to attend university in Manhattan, where I started my career in journalism and the media. Since then, Iâve lived in Berlin, Germany; Hong Kong; and now Copenhagen, Denmark, generally moving to advance my career and explore new worlds. Whenever you move to a new place and establish yourself in a new culture, thereâs always a learning curve. Helping other women (and men!) adapt to their new environment is why I started the âHow to Live in Denmarkâ podcast, which has now been running for more than 10 years.Â
One of the reasons I like this book is because the author is a man writing about a womanâs inner thoughts and, unusually, doing a very good job.
The time and place: London, the 1890s. Single women are known as âthe odd women,â the leftovers. Dr. Rhoda Nunn starts a school to train these women in secretarial skills (back then, most secretaries were men) so that they wonât be dependent on relatives or forced into unhappy marriages. Rhoda herself is proudly unmarried and independent â until she meets an absolutely wonderful man. Will she give up her advocacy for âodd womenâ and marry the man she loves?Â
(Warning: this book is out of copyright, so shoddy rip-offs are being sold on Amazon. Make sure you get a legit copy.)
`there are half a million more women than men in this unhappy country of ours . . . So many odd women - no making a pair with them.'
The idea of the superfluity of unmarried women was one the `New Woman' novels of the 1890s sought to challenge. But in The Odd Women (1893) Gissing satirizes the prevailing literary image of the `New Woman' and makes the point that unmarried women were generally viewed less as noble and romantic figures than as `odd' and marginal in relation to the ideal of womanhood itself. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, theseâŚ
