Women's Review of Books - 2015 Issues

 

January/February 2015

 

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  • Science, Religion, and Politics
    From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America
    By Kimberly A. Hamlin
    Reviewed by Emily R. Grosholz

  • Of Binoculars and Birdhats, Treaties and Toxicology
    Fallen Forests: Emotion, Embodiment and Ethics in American Women’s Environmental Writing, 1781-1924
    By Karen L. Kilcup

    Rachel Carson and Her Sisters: Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America's Environment

    By Brian Musil
    Reviewed by Shaeleen A. Meaney


  • Capital Matters... But So Does Gender
    Capital in the Twenty-First Century
    By Thomas Piketty, Translated by Arthur Goldhammer
    Reviewed by Kate Bahn

  • Those Society Has Abandoned
    From Pariahs to Partners: How Parents and Their Allies Changed New York City’s Child Welfare System By David Tobis; To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care
    By Cris Beam
    Reviewed by Ruth Sidel

  • Keeping The Mission Alive
    Sex Work Politics: From Protest to Service Provision
    By Samantha Majic
    Reviewed by Marianna Wesson

  • Art and Politics
    The Other Black List: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s
    By Mary Helen Washington
    Reviewed by Dayo Gore

  • Photography
    The Meeting of Art and Technology: The Polaroid Collections
    By Ellen Feldman

  • The Radical and The Moderate
    Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage By Trisha Franzen; Alice Paul: Claiming Power
    By J.D. Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry
    Reviewed by Louise W. Knight

  • Field Notes
    In Memoriam: Maxine Kumin (1925-2014)
    By Robin Becker

  • Competition and Symbiosis
    Invisible Beasts: Tales of the Animals That Go Unseen Among Us
    By Sharon Muir
    Reviewed by Marianna DeKoven

  • Poetry
    By Irene Willis

  • A Lot More To Say
    The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure
    Edited by Tristan Taormino, Celine Parrenas Shimizu, Constance Penley, Mireille Miller-Young
    Reviewed by Wendy Chapkis

  • The Chaos and Quiet of Karen Green 
    Bough Down
    By Karen Green
    Reviewed by Ana Isabel Keilson

  • A Black-And-White Photograph 
    Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
    By Francine Prose 
    Reviewed by Marcie Blanco

  • The History of Western Art
    The Blazing World
    By Siri Hustvedt
    Reviewed by Cassandra Langer

  • Lost Property
    Things I Don’t Want To Know: On Writing By Deborah Levy; Black Vodka: Ten Stories
    By Deborah Levy 

    Reviewed by Elaine Margolin

March/April 2015

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  • Trapped in the Self
    Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks
    By Jordynn Jack
    Reviewed by Ellen Herman

  • Cross with the Church
    Good Catholics: The Battle over Abortion in the Catholic Church
    By Patricia Miller
    Reviewed by Mary E. Hunt

  • Exclusion and Unexpectation
    Girls Coming to Tech!: A History of American Engineering Education for Women
    By Amy Sue Bix
    Searching for Scientific Womanpower: Technocratic Feminism and the Politics of National Security, 1940-1980
    By Laura Micheletti Puaca
    Reviewed by Nina E. Lerman

  • Hard Work and Overalls
    Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America By Miriam Frank; Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers
    By Anne Balay
    Reviewed by Bettina Aptheker

  • Sexual Revolutionaries
    The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
    By Jonathan Eig
    Reviewed by Wendy Kline

  • Rebellion and Survival
    Holocaust Mothers and Daughters: Family, History, and Trauma
    By Federica K. Clementi
    Reviewed by Evelyn Torton Beck

  • Poetry
    By Marion Brown

  • Good Reads
    A Stranger Comes to Town
    By Trish Crapo

  • Carrying Across
    Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz: Selected Works
    Translated by Edith Grossman
    Reviewed by Amanda Powell

  • Cartoon
    By Kelly Froh

  • Families in Motion, Fueled by Faith
    More Than Conquerors: A Memoir of Lost Arguments
    By Megan Hustad
    The Last Days of California
    By Mary Miller
    Reviewed by Joy Castro

  • Parallel Lives
    The Four Words For Home
    By Angie Chuang
    Reviewed by Valerie Miner

  • I Want My Face to be Very Mad
    Spectacular Girls: Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture
    By Sarah Projansky
    Reviewed by Elline Lipkin

  • A Tragic Mess
    The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, The Power Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities
    By William D. Cohan
    Reviewed by Laura Pappano

  • I Am Because We Are
    Transformation Now! Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change
    By AnaLouise Keating
    Reviewed by Xiumei Pu

  • Sleeping on the Same Pillow
    Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early AmericaBy Rachel Hope Cleves
    Reviewed by Marla R. Miller

May/June 2015

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  • Making a Spectacle of Herself
    Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman
    By Joan Rothfuss
    Reviewed by Debra Cash

  • The Strongest and Wisest Amazon
    The Secret History of Wonder Woman By Jill Lepore; Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948 By Noah Berlatsky
    By Patricia Miller
    Reviewed by Joan Hilty

  • Fashion Victims
    Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco
    By Clare Sears
    Reviewed by Lillian Faderman

  • Offending Women
    Can’t Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility By Susan Starr Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk; Mean Lives, Mean Laws: Oklahoma’s Women Prisoners By Susan F. Sharp
    Reviewed by Rickie Solinger

  • Public Women
    The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation and Institutions
    By Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg
    Reviewed by Glenna Matthews

  • No Tolerance for Easy Answers
    The Essential Ellen Willis
    Edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
    Reviewed by Astrid Henry

  • The Complexity of Success
    Relentless Reformer: Josephine Roche and Progressivism in Twentieth Century America 
    By Robyn Muncy 
    Reviewed by Alice Kessler-Harris

  • How the Little House Was Won
    Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography 
    Edited by Pamela Smith Hill 
    Reviewed by Holly Blackford

  • Poetry
    By Beth Enson

  • Field Notes
    Euphoric Stew
    By Robin Becker

  • Labor in Both Senses of the Word
    Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India
    By Amrita Pande
    The Last Days of California
    By Mary Miller 
    Reviewed by Rajani Bhatia

  • All in Her Head
    Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health
    By Joanna Kempner
    Reviewed by Paula Kamen

  • "Disarm! Disarm!"
    Modern Motherhood: An American History
    By Jodi Vandenberg-Daves
    Reviewed by Alicia Ostriker

  • Essay
    Changing Women's Lives Through Literature
    By Jean Trounstine

  • A Same-Sex Murder Ballad
    Alice & Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis
    By Alexis Coe, illustrations by Sally Klann
    Reviewed by Susanna J. Sturgis

  • Things Underneath
    How to Be Both
    By Ali Smith
    Reviewed by Rebecca Meacham

July/August 2015

 

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  • A Positive Social Good
    Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
    By Katha Pollitt
    Reviewed by Marlene Fried

  • Ten Fingers and Ten Toes
    Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race By Ellen Samuels
    Reviewed by Lauri Umansky

  • Complicating the story of women in the Nation of Islam
    A Nation Can Rise No Higher Than Its Women: African American Muslim Women in the Movement for Black Self-Determination, 1950-1975
    By Bayyinah S. Jeffries; Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam
    By Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim
    Reviewed by Juliane Hammer

  • Transported Women
    Harlots, Hussies and Poor Unfortunate Women: Crime, Transportation, and the Servitude of Female Convicts, 1718-1783
    By Edith M. Ziegler
    Reviewed by Rona L. Holub

  • Indigenous Rights And Women’S Rights Together
    Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories
    By Hilary Klein Reviewed by Lynn Stephen

  • Cartoon By Cara Bean

  • Good Reads ESPIONAGE AND INTRIGUE
    By Trish Crapo

  • Poetry By Jessica Greenbaum

  • Love As Fierce As Death
    A Stranger’s Mirror: New and Selected Poems, 1994-2013 By Marilyn Hacker;
    Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2015
    By Chana Bloch
    Reviewed by Alicia Ostriker

  • Failure To Communicate
    Pan American Women: US Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico
    By Megan Threlkeld
    Reviewed by Catia Cecilia Confortini

  • Splitters, Knitters, And Quitters
    School’s Out: Gay and Lesbian Teachers in the Classroom
    By Catherine Connell
    Reviewed by Pam Chamberlain

  • Her Own Chair
    Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words
    Edited by Malka Marom
    Reviewed by Joanna Weiss

  • Staying Home Or Leaving It
    Russian Tattoo
    By Elena Gorokhova;
    Waiting for Electricity
    By Christina Nichol
    Reviewed by Marta Bladek

  • Unencumbered
    Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation
    By Trimiko Melancon
    Reviewed by Rachel Afi Quinn

  • Black Women Reporters On The White House Beat
    Alone Atop the Hill: The Autobiography of Alice Dunnigan, Pioneer of the National Black Press
    Edited by Carol McCabe Booker;
    Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press
    By James McGrath Morris; The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America
    By April Ryan
    Reviewed by A. J. Verdelle

September/October 2015

BUY ISSUE>> wrobcover09 01 15

  • Thirty Ounces of Death in a Feathered Jacket
    H Is for Hawk
    By Helen Macdonald
    Reviewed by Mary Zeiss Stange

  • No Empire Without Collaborators
    Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies From Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves By Peipei Qiu with Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei
    Reviewed by Lihua Wang

  • Putin Performs Masculinity
    Sex, Politics, & Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia By Valerie Sperling
    Reviewed by Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild

  • Protected and Policed
    Regulating Desire: From the Virtuous Maiden to the Purity Princess By J. Shoshanna Ehrlich
    Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI By Jessica R. Pliley
    Reviewed by Anne Gray Fischer

  • Uncaring Health Care
    Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women By Barbara Gurr
    Reviewed by Andrea Smith

  • Not A Feminist But
    Cora Du Bois: Anthropologist, Diplomat, Agent By Susan C. Seymour
    Reviewed by Lois Banner

  • Poetry
    By Amy Dyansky

  • Photography
    Beyond Stereotype
    Photography by Anne Rearick and Commentary by Ellen Feldman

  • Field Notes
    Recollecting in Tranquility By Robin Becker

  • A Nation Founded On Genocide
    An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
    Reviewed by Brook Colley

  • Serious Daring
    Dollhouse By Elaine Terranova
    Blue Hanuman By Joan Larkin
    Otherwise UnseeableBy Betsy Sholl
    Reviewed by Charlotte Holmes

  • A Boy On the Run
    Little Bastards in Springtime By Katja Rudolph
    Reviewed by Kelly Cherry

  • NGOs: Soft Power Turning the Gears
    Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism Edited by Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal
    Reviewed by Miranda Joseph

  • Finding Her Life Path
    Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro By Sarah H. Jacoby
    Reviewed by Serinity Young

  • Colonialist Dreams of Lesbianism
    The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830 By Susan S. Lanser
    Reviewed by Lisa L. Moore

  • Pleasure and Performance
    A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography By Mireille Miller-Young
    The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography By Jennifer C. Nash
    Reviewed by Svati P. Shah

November/Docember 2015

BUY ISSUE>> wrobcover11 01 15

  • A Family Recipe
    Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs By Sally Mann
    Reviewed by Trish Crapo

  • Becoming Children
    South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration By Marcia Chatelain
    Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans By LaKisha Michelle Simmons
    Reviewed by Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant

  • An Activist in Her Own Right
    Eleanor Marx: A Life By Rachel Holmes
    Reviewed by Linda Gordon

  • Poetry
    By Alice Friman

  • Add These to Your Queue
    Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms By Patricia White
    Reviewed by Erin Trahan

  • Color Politics Remix
    God Help the Child By Toni Morrison
    Reviewed by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

  • Cartoon
    Timebomb, or How I Discovered Sybil Lamb, My New Fave Queer Woman Author & ArtistBy Cristy C. Road

  • The Unrecoverable Recovered
    The Match Girl and the Heiress By Seth Koven
    Reviewed by Lisa Rodensky

  • Good Reads
    Outrunning Sadness By Trish Crapo

  • Imagining Alternative Worlds
    Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture By Adrienne Shaw
    Reviewed by Carmen Maria Machado

  • Should a Feminist Dance Tango?
    Dancing Tango: Passionate Encounters in a Globalizing World By Kathy Davis
    The Gods of Tango By Carolina De Robertis
    Reviewed by Debra Cash

  • The Politics of Hair
    Plucked: A History of Hair Removal By Rebecca M. Herzig
    Reviewed by Rachel Somerstein

  • Vigorous Minds
    Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley By Charlotte Gordon
    Reviewed by Gina Luria Walker

  • Nothing Is Wasted
    Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life By Hermione Lee
    Reviewed by Ana Isabel Keilson


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The Women's Review of Books receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Massachusetts Cultural Council

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