Mom & Me & Mom

Written by Maya Angelou

Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: April 2, 2013
Price: $22.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6611-7 (1-4000-6611-5)

The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother.

For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter... Read more >

The Handmaid's Tale

Written by Margaret Atwood

Format: Hardcover, 392 pages
Publisher: Everyman's Library
On Sale: October 17, 2006
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-26460-2 (0-307-26460-2)

A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale has become one of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time.

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter... Read more >

Ask For It
How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want
Written by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: January 27, 2009
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-38455-0 (0-553-38455-4)

From the authors of Women Don’t Ask, the groundbreaking book that revealed just how much women lose when they avoid negotiation, here is the action plan that women all over the country requested—a guide to negotiating anything effectively using strategies that feel comfortable to you as a woman.

Whether it’s a... Read more >

Women Don't Ask
The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change
Written by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: February 27, 2007
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-38387-4 (0-553-38387-6)

By neglecting to negotiate her starting salary for her first job, a woman may sacrifice over half a million dollars in earnings by the end of her career. Yet, as research reveals, men are four times more likely to ask for higher pay than are women with the same qualifications. From... Read more >

The Second Sex

Written by Simone de Beauvoir
Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

Format: Hardcover, 832 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: April 13, 2010
Price: $40.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-26556-2 (0-307-26556-0)

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to postulate on the power of sexuality.

Sixty years after its initial publication, The Second Sex is still... Read more >

Civil War Wives
The Lives & Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis & Julia Dent Grant
Written by Carol Berkin

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 2, 2010
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-9578-0 (1-4000-9578-6)

Here are the life stories of three women who connect us to our national past and provide windows onto a social and political landscape that is strangely familiar yet shockingly foreign.

Berkin focuses on three “accidental heroes” who left behind sufficient records to allow their voices to be heard clearly and to... Read more >

Civil War Wives
The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant
Written by Carol Berkin

Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: September 8, 2009
Price: $28.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4446-7 (1-4000-4446-4)

In the life stories of three “accidental heroes”—women whose marriages provided them with position and perspective they would not otherwise have had—Carol Berkin, one of the nation’s premier historians, offers a unique understanding of the tumultuous social and political landscape of their time.

Drawing on private and public records, Berkin shows us... Read more >

Wild Rose
The True Story of a Civil War Spy
Written by Ann Blackman

Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: May 23, 2006
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7045-6 (0-8129-7045-4)

For sheer bravado and style, no woman in the North or South rivaled the Civil War heroine Rose O’Neale Greenhow. Fearless spy for the Confederacy, glittering Washington hostess, legendary beauty and lover, Rose Greenhow risked everything for the cause she valued more than life itself. In this superb portrait, biographer Ann... Read more >

A Queer History of the United States

Written by Michael Bronski

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: May 15, 2012
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4465-0 (0-8070-4465-2)

*2011 ALA Stonewall Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award

The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.

In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early... Read more >

Feed Me!
Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image
Written by Harriet Brown

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: January 27, 2009
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-50088-5 (0-345-50088-1)

Food inspires pleasure and anxiety, shame and obsession. We are constantly judged on how we look, so we’ve come to judge ourselves (and others) on what and how we eat.

These evocative essays, from some of the most talented and popular writers working today, tackle this universal subject with humor, longing, and... Read more >

Perdita
The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson
Written by Paula Byrne

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: March 14, 2006
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7079-1 (0-8129-7079-9)

This compelling and richly researched book presents a fascinating portrait of Mary Robinson–darling of the London stage, mistress to the most powerful men in England, feminist thinker, and bestselling author. Though one of the most flamboyant free spirits of the late eighteenth century, Mary led a life that was marked by... Read more >

The Memoirs of Catherine the Great

Written by Catherine the Great
Translated by Markus Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: June 13, 2006
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-6987-0 (0-8129-6987-1)

Empress Catherine II brought Europe to Russia, and Russia to Europe, during her long and eventful reign (1762—96). She fostered the culture of the Enlightenment and greatly expanded the immense empire created by Czar Ivan the Terrible, shifting the balance of power in Europe eastward. Famous for her will to power... Read more >

Factory Girls
From Village to City in a Changing China
Written by Leslie T. Chang

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: August 4, 2009
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-52018-8 (0-385-52018-2)

Winner of the 2009 Asian American Literary Award For Nonfiction, given by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction
A New York Times Notable Book of 2008
One of the Washington Post’s best books of 2008
A Seattle Times best nonfiction book of 2008
One of the Christian... Read more >

Unconfessed

Written by Yvette Christianse

Format: Trade Paperback, 360 pages
Publisher: Other Press
On Sale: September 17, 2007
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-59051-281-4 (1-59051-281-2)

Pen/Hemingway Award Finalist

Slavery as it existed in Africa has seldom been portrayed–and never with such texture, detail, and authentic emotion. Inspired by actual 19th-century court records, Unconfessed is a breathtaking literary tour de force. They called her Sila van den Kaap, slave woman of Jacobus Stephanus Van der Wat of Plettenberg... Read more >

Gender Talk
The Struggle For Women's Equality in African American Communities
Written by Johnnetta B. Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
On Sale: December 30, 2003
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-45413-3 (0-345-45413-8)

"...a cogent history of black feminist struggles and debates up until now."
—The Women's Review of Books

Two of America’s leading African-American intellectuals provide the most comprehensive critique to date of the state of relations between Black men and women. Dr. Johnetta Cole and Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall argue that, in the 21st century,... Read more >

Paradise Beneath Her Feet
How Women Are Transforming the Middle East
Written by Isobel Coleman

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: February 26, 2013
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7855-1 (0-8129-7855-2)

“Outstanding . . . [Isobel Coleman] takes us into remote villages and urban bureaucracies to find the brave men and women working to create change in the Middle East.”—Los Angeles Times

In this timely and important book, Isobel Coleman shows how Muslim women and men across the Middle East are working within... Read more >

Paradise Beneath Her Feet
How Women Are Transforming the Middle East
Written by Isobel Coleman

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: April 27, 2010
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6695-7 (1-4000-6695-6)

Over the centuries and throughout the world, women have struggled for equality and basic rights. Their challenge in the Middle East has been intensified by the rise of a political Islam that too often condemns women’s empowerment as Western cultural imperialism or, worse, anti-Islamic. In Paradise Beneath Her Feet, Isobel Coleman... Read more >

The Age of Conversation

Written by Benedetta Craveri

Format: Trade Paperback, 508 pages
Publisher: New York Review Books
On Sale: August 1, 2006
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-214-8 (1-59017-214-0)

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between the reign of Louis XIII and the Revolution, French aristocratic society developed an art of living based on a refined code of good manners.

Conversation, which began as a way of passing time, eventually became the central ritual of social life. In the salons... Read more >

The Lady and the Panda
The True Adventures of the First American Explorer to Bring Back China's Most Exotic Animal
Written by Vicki Croke

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: June 13, 2006
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-75970-3 (0-375-75970-0)

In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke relates the remarkable story of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey to capture a panda—a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke offers an... Read more >

An American Story

Written by Debra J. Dickerson

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 18, 2001
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-72028-1 (0-385-72028-9)

A profoundly courageous and insightful memoir, An American Story documents the events that have shaped journalist Debra Dickerson's conscience.

The daughter of former sharecroppers, Dickerson never imagined she would emerge from her squalid St. Louis neighborhood to become an acclaimed journalist with a Harvard Law degree. A constant reader and a straight-A... Read more >

Pornland
How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality
Written by Gail Dines

Format: eBook
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: August 6, 2010
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4453-7 (0-8070-4453-9)

Professor Gail Dines has written about and researched the porn industry for over two decades. She attends industry conferences, interviews producers and performers, and speaks to hundreds of men and women each year about their experience with porn. Students and educators describe her work as “life changing.”

In Pornland–the culmination of... Read more >

Seducing the Boys Club
Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top
Written by Nina DiSesa

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: December 30, 2008
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-49699-7 (0-345-49699-X)

Chairman of the flagship office of the largest advertising agency network in the world, McCann Erickson, Nina DiSesa is a master communicator, a ceiling crasher, and a big-time realist. In Seducing the Boys Club, DiSesa shows you how S&M–seduction and manipulation–is the secret to winning over (and surpassing) the big guys... Read more >

The Birth of Venus
A Novel
Written by Sarah Dunant

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: November 30, 2004
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-6897-2 (0-8129-6897-2)

2005 BOOK SENSE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD, ADULT NON-FICTION

Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a... Read more >

The Bobbed Haired Bandit
A Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York
Written by Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson

Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: April 10, 2007
Price: $9.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7735-6 (0-8129-7735-1)

On January 5, 1924, a well-dressed young woman, accompanied by a male companion, walked into a Brooklyn grocery, pulled a “baby automatic” from the pocket of her fur coat, emptied the cash register, and escaped into the night. Dubbed “the Bobbed Haired Bandit” by the press, the petite thief continued her... Read more >

The Dud Avocado

Written by Elaine Dundy
Introduction by Terry Teachout

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: June 5, 2007
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-232-2 (1-59017-232-9)

Elaine Dundy’s semi-autobiographical comic novel follows the misadventures of an American girl who impulsively quits college and heads off to conquer Paris in the 1950s.

Sally Jay Gorce sets out to become an actress, but what she really wants to do is experience the wide world, and to “make her wits... Read more >