The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued

The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women

Elisabeth Badinter · 212 pages

Today, to be pregnant seems not far from entering into a religious order. There is an expectation that mothers will fit the bill of breastfeeding, nappy-washing, home-cooking supermums. So are mums who rely on formula, childcare and disposable nappies lazy or liberated? The conflict between a woman's individual identity and her identity as a mother is not unique to our time. In the 18th century, F

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage

Cathi Hanauer · 306 pages

The Wife Drought

Annabel Crabb · 293 pages

The Wife Drought is about women, men, family and work. Written in Annabel Crabb's inimitable style, it's full of candid and funny stories from the author's work in and around politics and the media, historical nuggets about the role of 'The Wife' in Australia, and intriguing research about the attitudes that pulse beneath the surface of egalitarian Australia.

Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family

Anne-Marie Slaughter · 352 pages

"When Anne-Marie Slaughter accepted her dream job as the first female director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department in 2009, she was confident she could juggle the demands of her position in Washington, D.C., with the responsibilities of her family life in suburban New Jersey. Her husband and two young sons encouraged her to pursue the job; she had a tremendously supportive boss, Secret

Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?: A Story About Women and Economics

Katrine Kielos, Katrine Marcal · 235 pages

"How do you get your dinner? That is the basic question of economics. It might seem easy, but it is actually very complicated. When Adam Smith proclaimed that all our actions were motivated by self-interest and the world turned because of financial gain he laid the foundations for 'economic man'. Selfish and cynical, 'economic man' has dominated our thinking ever since, the ugly rational heart of

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 64 pages

In this essay -- adapted from her TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration

Born to Buy

Juliet B. Schor · 289 pages

Ads aimed at kids are virtually everywhere -- in classrooms and textbooks, on the Internet, even at slumber parties and the playground. Product placement and other innovations have introduced more subtle advertising to movies and television. Companies are enlisting children as guerrilla marketers, targeting their friends and families. Even trusted social institutions such as the Girl Scouts are te

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But

Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World

Peggy Orenstein · 337 pages

"In her latest book, Orenstein looks at womanhood and what it means to be a woman at the beginning of this century. After talking to over two hundred women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, she has blended their voices into a narrative that allows the reader to "eavesdrop" - to get deep inside the lives and choices of other women - and share their thoughts on ambition and power, the

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

Angela Garbes · 256 pages

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women

Hanna Rosin · 310 pages

Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. And yet, as journalist Hanna Rosin discovered, that long-held truth is no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, women are no longer merely gaining on men; they have pulled decisively ahead by almost every measure. Already "the end of men" -- the phrase Rosin coined -- has entered the lexicon as indelibly as Simone de Beauvoir's

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Robert D. Putnam · 386 pages

"A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. It's the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in--a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last

The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home

Arlie Russell Hochschild, Anne Machung · 318 pages

"When The Second Shift was first published in 1989, it was hailed as "a scream in the dark" and "a brilliant, urgently needed analysis ... of the working woman who has it all". Now, in the twenty-first century, The Second Shift remains as important and relevant as when it was first published. As the majority of women entered the workforce, sociologist and Berkeley professor Arlic Hochschild was on

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety

Judith Warner · 336 pages

The paradigm-shattering bestseller that investigates how women have fallen into the trap of "total motherhood," and how that mind-set damages them and their relationships with their husbands and children. Manic cookie-baking at midnight. Play dates as complicated as peace summits. Mother-of-the-birthday-boy meltdown. Ambien nights and Ritalin days. No sex. No nights out. No sleep. Ever. It's madne

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

Sharon Lamb, Lyn Mikel Brown · 336 pages

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich · 240 pages

The author's experience holding low-wage jobs in three parts of the U.S. in the late 1990s.

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Sheryl Sandberg · 240 pages

Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and industry. This means that women's voices are still not heard equally in the decisions that most affect our lives. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg examines why women's progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root ca

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell · 320 pages

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their

Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids

Meghan Daum · 282 pages

The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It

Meenakshi Gigi Durham · 320 pages

In this expos of how young girls are sexualized in today's media, the author uses examples from popular TV shows, magazines, movies, and Web sites to show for the first time all the ways in which sexuality is defined in media--often in ways detrimental to girls' healthy development--as well as effective and progressive strategies for resisting the violations and repressions that render girls sexua

The Way We Never Were: American Families & the Nostalgia Trap

Stephanie Coontz · 391 pages

"The Way We Never Were is an examination of two centuries of family life that shatter the myths that burden modern families and make them long for the past." "In a new introduction, Coontz examines key cultural events since the original 1992 publication - from Bill Clinton's sexual transgressions to high school shootings across the nation - and reexamines the myths that continue to compel the Amer

Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

Jessica Valenti · 176 pages

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (And More Life to Live)

Eve Rodsky · 352 pages

Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families

Leslie Morgan Steiner · 346 pages

With motherhood comes one of the toughest decisions of a woman's life: Stay at home or pursue a career? The dilemma not only divides mothers into hostile, defensive camps but pits individual mothers against themselves. Leslie Morgan Steiner has been there. As an executive at The Washington Post, a writer, and mother of three, she has lived and breathed every side of the "mommy wars." Rather than j