My Brilliant Friends is a group biography of three women's friendships forged in second-wave feminism. Poignant and politically charged, the book is a captivating personal account of the complexities of women's bonds. Nancy K. Miller describes her friendships with three well-known scholars and literary critics: Carolyn Heilbrun, Diane Middlebrook, and Naomi Schor. Their relationships were simultaneously intimate and professional, emotional and intellectual, animated by the ferment of the women's movement. Friendships like these sustained the generation of women whose entrance into male-dominated professions is still reshaping American society. The stories of their intertwined lives and books embody feminism's belief in the political importance of personal experience. Reflecting on aging and loss, ambition and rivalry, competition and collaboration, Miller shows why and how friendship's ties matter in the worlds of work and love. Inspired in part by the portraits of the intensely enmeshed lives in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friends provides a passionate and timely vision of friendship between women.

In the space of a year, Laurie Penny has become one of the most prominent voices of the new left. This book brings together her diverse writings, showing what it is to be young, angry, and progressive in the face of an increasingly violent and oppressive UK government. Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent collects Penny's writings on youth politics, resistance, feminism, and culture. Her journalism is a unique blend of persuasive analysis, captivating interviews, and first-hand accounts of political direct action. She was involved in all the key protests of 2010/2011, including the anti-fees demos in 2010, and the anti-cuts protests of spring 2011, often tweeting live from the scene of kettles and baton charges. An introduction, conclusion, and extensive footnotes allow Penny to connect all the strands of her work, showing the links between political activism and wider social and cultural issues. This book is essential for understanding what motivates the new generation of activists, writers and thinkers that bring creativity, energy and urgency to the fight against capitalism and exploitation.

"Fifteen years after her death, Andrea Dworkin remains one of the most important and challenging figures in second-wave feminism. Although frequently relegated to its more radical fringes, Dworkin was without doubt a formidable and influential writer, a philosopher, and an activist-a brilliant figure who inspired and infuriated in equal measure. Her many detractors were eager to reduce her to the caricature of the angry, man-hating feminist who believed that all sex was rape, and as a result, her work has long been misunderstood. It is in recent years, especially with the rise of the #MeToo movement, that there has been a resurgence of interest in her ideas. This biography is the perfect complement to the widely reviewed anthology of her writing, Last Days at Hot Slit, published in 2019, providing much-needed context to her work. Given exclusive access to never-before-published photographs and archives, including her letters to many of the major figures of second-wave feminism, award-winning biographer Martin Duberman traces Dworkin's life, from her abusive first marriage through her central role in the sex and pornography wars of the following decades. This is a vital, complex, and long overdue reassessment of the life and work of one of the towering figures of second-wave feminism"--

Andrea Dworkin reveals the personal side of her lifelong journey as activist and writer. A bittersweet memoir of falling in love with books, ideas, and the fight for social justice - from the 60s to the present.

“Susan B. Anthony didn’t live long enough to see women get the vote, but her tireless dedication shines through on every page.”— The Washington Post Book World Failure Is Impossible brings together—for the first time—a wide-ranging, spirited collection of Susan B. Anthony’s speeches, letters, and quotes, linked by contemporary reports and Lynn Sherr’s insightful biographical commentary. By allowing the legendary suffragist to speak for herself, Sherr brushes the dust off of the Susan B. Anthony icon, introducing a new generation to the brave, brilliant, funny, and, most of all, prescient woman she really was. “Lynn Sherr has done us all a great service by bringing to spectacular light the too long neglected story of one of our greatest patriots—a genuine hero who helped change for the better the lives of a majority of American citizens.”—Ken Burns

"Virginia Woolf wrote that in order to be a writer, a woman needs a room of one's own. Now, in [this book], acclaimed author Deborah Levy concludes her ground-breaking trilogy of living autobiographies with an exhilarating, boldly intimate meditation on home and the specters that haunt it. In this vibrant memoir, Levy employs her characteristic indelible writing, sharp wit, and acute insights to craft a searing examination of womanhood and ownership. Her inventory of possessions, real and imagined, pushes readers to question our cultural understanding of belonging and belongings and to consider the value of a woman's intellectual and personal life. Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory, [this book] is a brilliant, compulsively readable narrative" --

At last Betty Friedan herself speaks about her life and career. With the same unsparing frankness that made The Feminine Mystique one of the most influential books of our era, Friedan looks back and tells us what it took -- and what it cost -- to change the world. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, started the women's movement; it sold more than four million copies and was recently named one of the one hundred most important books of the century. In Life So Far, Friedan takes us on an intimate journey through her life -- a lonely childhood in Peoria, Illinois; salvation at Smith College; her days as a labor reporter for a union newspaper in New York (from which she was dismissed when she became pregnant); unfulfilling and painful years as a suburban housewife; finding great joy as a mother; and writing The Feminine Mystique, which grew out of a survey of her Smith classmates and started it all. Friedan chronicles the secret underground of women in Washington, D.C., who drafted her in the early 1960s to spearhead an "NAACP" for women, and recounts the courage of many, including some Catholic nuns who played a brave part in those early days of NOW, the National Organization for Women. Friedan's feminist thinking, a philosophy of evolution, is reflected throughout her book. She recognized early that the women's movement would falter if institutions did not change to reflect the new realities of women's lives, and she fought to keep the movement practical and free of extremism, including "man-hating." She describes candidly the movement's political infighting that brought her to the point of legal action and resulted in a long breach with fellow leaders Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug. Friedan is frank about her twenty-two-year marriage to Carl Friedan, an advertising entrepreneur. She writes about the explosive cycle of drinking, arguing, and physical battering she endured and explores her prolonged inability to leave the marriage. (They are now friends and the grandparents of nine.) Friedan was not only pivotal in the founding of NOW, she was also the driving force behind the creation of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), and the First Women's Bank and Trust Company. She made history by introducing the issue of sex discrimination as an argument against the ratification of a Supreme Court nominee. She convinced the Secretary General of the United Nations to declare 1975 the International Year of the Woman. In this volume, Friedan brings to extraordinary life her bold and contentious leadership in the movement. She lectures, writes, leads think tanks, and organizes women and men to work together in political, legal, and social battles on behalf of women's rights. It is exactly this breadth of vision that makes Friedan's memoir an important and compelling work.

"Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin was a caricature of the manhater in the popular imagination as well as a polarizing figure within the women's movement, infamous for her antipornography stance in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, more than a decade after her death, this timely collection of her writing showcases the prescience of her analyses: of the genocidal character of sexual violence; of the devastating nihilism of white male supremacy, and of the toll it takes--especially on those who resist. This rediscovery of Dworkin's work will serve as a flashpoint for crucial feminist conversations today. Why is the cost of speaking out against abuse and inequality still so high? Why is the problematic work of brilliant women forced into oblivion, when that of flawed great men is embraced? What can we learn from the bitter divisions and discarded ideas of previous generations?"--Page 4 of cover.

The Feminism of Uncertainty brings together Ann Snitow’s passionate, provocative dispatches from forty years on the front lines of feminist activism and thought. In such celebrated pieces as "A Gender Diary"—which confronts feminism’s need to embrace, while dismantling, the category of "woman"—Snitow is a virtuoso of paradox. Freely mixing genres in vibrant prose, she considers Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, and Dorothy Dinnerstein and offers self-reflexive accounts of her own organizing, writing, and teaching. Her pieces on international activism, sexuality, motherhood, and the waywardness of political memory all engage feminism’s impossible contradictions—and its utopian hopes.

The Feminism of Uncertainty brings together Ann Snitow’s passionate, provocative dispatches from forty years on the front lines of feminist activism and thought. In such celebrated pieces as "A Gender Diary"—which confronts feminism’s need to embrace, while dismantling, the category of "woman"—Snitow is a virtuoso of paradox. Freely mixing genres in vibrant prose, she considers Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, and Dorothy Dinnerstein and offers self-reflexive accounts of her own organizing, writing, and teaching. Her pieces on international activism, sexuality, motherhood, and the waywardness of political memory all engage feminism’s impossible contradictions—and its utopian hopes.

A unique memoir that interweaves poetry, narrative, meditation, and social history, A Spiritual Life explores the complex facets of a Jewish woman's spiritual coming-of-age, capturing the emotional and spiritual reality of contemporary Jews as well as religious seekers of all types. From the experiences of early childhood, to the spiritual awakening of a secular adolescent encountering Jewish tradition, to the alternately funny and searing tales of new-found independence, early married life, young motherhood, and midlife, Feld comments with remarkable honesty and clarity on the many stages of spiritual and artistic exploration and growth. Overarching all these accounts is the picture of how the cycle of the Jewish calendar year comes to provide an ever-renewing source of sustenance for the author's deepening spiritual expression.

"Sisters is a revealing, intensely readable book by one of Ireland's finest feminist writers. It contains a major assessment of the women's movement in Ireland, but first and foremost it tells the story of one woman's search for personal fulfilment." "After growing up in Dublin, June Levine went through marriage, breakdown and divorce in Canada, returning to Ireland as an unmarried woman in the swinging sixties. She writes with special insight of the era of the mohair-suited Irish male and his liberated 'girl' friends." "By the end of the decade, some women decided that this kind of liberation was no longer enough. The Irish women's movement was born, and June Levine was there from the start. This book captures all the excitement and controversy of the time, and is laced with perceptive pen-portraits of some well-known feminist leaders." "During the seventies June Levine worked as a journalist, and as a researcher on Gay Byrne's Late Late Show. Her evaluation of the past ten years in terms of her own experience, and in terms of Irish feminism, makes fascinating and absorbing reading."--Jacket

Twenty years ago, the second wave of feminism in Britain was marked by the Women's Liberation Conference in Oxford. The author interviewed women who were there, and has produced portraits of a generation of women who came to political consciousness at a crucial moment in history.