Women's Review of Books - 2015 Issues

January/February 2015

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!

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