Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family

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.

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

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

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

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

Brigid Schulte · 368 pages

"Can working parents in America--or anywhere--ever find true leisure time? According to the Leisure Studies Department at the University of Iowa, true leisure is "that place in which we realize our humanity." If that's true, argues Brigid Schulte, then we're doing dangerously little realizing of our humanity. In Overwhelmed, Schulte, a staff writer for The Washington Post, asks: Are our brains, ou

Bossypants

Tina Fey · 277 pages

Tina Fey’s new book *Bossypants* is short, messy, and impossibly funny (an apt description of the comedian herself). From her humble roots growing up in Pennsylvania to her days doing amateur improv in Chicago to her early sketches on Saturday Night Live, Fey gives us a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of modern comedy with equal doses of wit, candor, and self-deprecation. Some of the funnie

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.

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

Angela Garbes · 256 pages

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

Eve Rodsky · 352 pages

Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood

Maureen Ryan · 348 pages

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

Ann Crittenden · 329 pages

"The price of motherhood is everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of more than a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Most child care is excluded from the gross domestic product, at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force, and the social safety net simply leaves them out. With passion a

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

Sharon Lamb, Lyn Mikel Brown · 336 pages

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

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

Cathi Hanauer · 306 pages

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

Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink

Katrina Alcorn · 385 pages

"Katrina Alcorn was a 37-year-old mother with a happy marriage and a thriving career when one day, on the way to Target to buy diapers, she had a breakdown. Her carefully built career shuddered to a halt, and her journey through depression, anxiety, and insomnia--followed by medication, meditation, and therapy--began. Alcorn began to question how a woman like herself, with a loving husband, a supp

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

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

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Adam Grant · 320 pages

Think Again is a book about the benefit of doubt, and about how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity, but constantly willing to rethink their stances and that leaders who admit they don't know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams. New evidence sh

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

Meghan Daum · 282 pages

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Adam M. Grant · 336 pages

""Reading Originals made me feel like I was seated across from Adam Grant at a dinner party, as one of my favorite thinkers thrilled me with his insights and his wonderfully new take on the world."--Malcolm Gladwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outliers and The Tipping Point "Originals is one of the most important and captivating books I have ever read, full of surprising and powerful

Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion from Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond

Mark Ames · 280 pages

Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

Kathryn Edin, Maria J. Kefalas · 299 pages

Millie Acevedo bore her first child before the age of 16 and dropped out of high school to care for her newborn. Now 27, she is the unmarried mother of three and is raising her kids in one of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods. Would she and her children be better off if she had waited to have them and had married their father first? Why do so many poor American youth like Millie continue to hav