A study of the Women's Liberation Movement and the development of feminism during the latter half of the twentieth century. It is written by the author of AGAINST OUR WILL: MEN, WOMEN AND RAPE.

With his wit and unique ability to illuminate history from below, Zinn reveals the life of this remarkable woman. As Zinn writes in his Introduction, Emma Goldman "seemed to be tireless as she traveled the country, lecturing to large audiences everywhere.

A leading activist and theorist of the contemporary women's movement examines its history and accomplishments, her own involvement, and prospective developments

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.

HONORABLE MENTION, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, Autobiography & Memoir! Lifelong activist Judy Gumbo, an original member of The Yippies, a 1960s anti-war satirical protest group, offers an insider feminist memoir of her involvement with the Yippies, Black Panthers, women's rights, environmental actions, and a life of activism. In 1968, a 24-year-old woman moved to Berkeley, California and immediately became enmeshed in the Youth International Party, aka The Yippies, an anti-war satirical protest group. In the next few years, Judy Gumbo (a nickname given her by Eldridge Cleaver), was soon at the center of counter-cultural activity-from protests in People's Park, to meetings at Black Panther headquarters, to running a pig for President at the raucous Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a protest that devolved into violent attacks by the police and arrests that led to the notorious Chicago Conspiracy Trial. In this historical account, Gumbo reveals intimate details of--and struggles with--her fellow radicals Jerry Rubin, Anita & Abbie Hoffman, Eldridge Cleaver, Paul Krassner, Stew Albert, and more, detailing their experiences in radical protests. This deep dive into her activism includes details of her organization of a national women's rights group, her visit to North Vietnam during the war, her travels around the globe to promote women's liberation and anti-war protest, and her environmental activism. It also includes extensive excerpts from illegal wiretaps and surveillance by the FBI. "A welcome addition to the literature of radical activism." --Kirkus Reviews "A fun read and a valuable political document, long overdue." --Counterpunch Yippie Girl explores Gumbo's life as a protester to show that, while circumstances always change, protesters can stay loyal to the causes they believe in and remain true to themselves. She also reveals how dogmatism, authoritarianism, and interpersonal conflict can damage those same just causes, offering a timeless and strategic guide for activists today protesting against injustice in all its forms.

"The first of Aletta Jacobs's major works available in English, Memories introduces American readers to a remarkable woman-a key Dutch feminist who herself broke new ground, and who worked alongside world-renowned leaders in the progressive movements of the early twentieth century. Aletta Jacobs learned to lvoe the medical profession from her physician father, who took her on his rounds. Despite a sex-segregated education system, she became the nations's first woman to earn a medical degree. Jacobs's experiences as a doctor led her to pioneering health care reforms for prostitutes and saleswomen, as well as campaigns for the acceptance and availability of reliable birth control. Aletta Jacob's career included equally remarkable achievements in the international woman's suffrage and peace movements, where she worked closely with U.S. activists Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt. Jacobs and Catt made frequent lecture tours together, culminating in a tour of Africa and Asia that combined avid sightseeing with speaking engagements in every country they visited. In Memories, Jacobs recounts all of these experiences, and spiritedly imparts her opinions-such as her disdain for the customs that restricted women to theater balcony seats and chastised them for walking alone at night. By turns witty, impassioned, and poignant, Memories brings to life a time of enormous changes for women-and one of the women who helped bring about the changes."--Book desc. via amazon.ca.

"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

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.

"Julia Howe (1819-1910) was a beautiful, studious New York heiress and aspiring poet when she married Bostonian Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, a hero of the Greek war of independence against the Turks and an internationally acclaimed pioneer in the education of the blind. Their marriage united two exceptional people. Together the Howes knew many of the key figures of their era, from Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale in England, to Margaret Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, and John Brown. But despite his philanthropic and abolitionist ideals, Dr. Howe did not support married women's work outside the home. He isolated Julia, opposed her literary ambitions, and wasted her inheritance. She defied him by continuing to publish poems and plays while raising their six children. She also secretly wrote a bold novel about a hermaphrodite, undiscovered until long after her death. And during the Civil War, she wrote the words to the most powerful and enduring anthem in the nation's history. Authorship of the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' made her famous and revered. But she fought her own civil war at home, battling with her husband over her rights to equality, intellectual freedom, and a public voice. As soon as the war ended, she became a pacifist and suffragist leader. In the second half of her life, she came into her own as a tireless campaigner for women's rights and social reform. In this biography, Elaine Showalter tells the story of Howe's determined self-creation and vividly restores her to the pantheon of feminist intellectuals who changed the world"--Jacket

Judy Rebick's Ten Thousand Roses is a major contribution to a chronicling of the second wave women's movement in Canada of the 1970s and 1980s. The story is told through the voices of dozens of women who played key roles in the fight for women's liberation and women's rights.

Shalvi has been a pioneer in advancing the status of women in Israel and in religious girls' education. She has been an active participant in peace dialogues and inter-religious initiatives and has been a social activist all her life. Born in Germany in 1926 to Orthodox parents, Shalvi grew up in London and studied English at Cambridge, before moving to Jerusalem in 1949 where she went on to pursue a PhD at Hebrew University, eventually teaching English Literature. In 1950, Shalvi met and married her husband, Moshe Shelkowitz (later Shalvi), who died in 2013. They had six children together. One of Shalvi's greatest accomplishments was the establishment of the Pelech School which she headed from 1975 to 1990. This experimental/ progressive religious high school for girls in Jerusalem has become a model for women's Orthodox education across the country. Shalvi was a co-founder of the Israel Women's Network, established to advance the status of women. In 2007 she was awarded the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievements in the areas of education, social welfare and human rights.

Set amidst the political upheaval of the McCarthy trials, the Vietnam War, and the rise of the women's movement, Intimate Politics is a courageous and uncompromising account of one woman's personal and political transformation, and a fascinating portrayal of a key chapter in our nation's history. At eight years old, Bettina Aptheker watched her family's politics play out in countless living rooms across the country when her father, historian and U.S. Communist Party leader Herbert Aptheker, testified on television in front of the House on Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. Born into one of the most influential U.S. Communist families whose friends included W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Bettina lived her parents' politics witnessing first-hand one of the most dramatic upheavals in American history. She also lived with a terrible secret: incest at the hands of her famous father and a frightening and lonely life lived inside a home wrought with family tensions. A gripping and beautifully rendered memoir, Intimate Politics is at its core the story of one woman's struggle to still the demons of her personal world while becoming a controversial public figure herself. This is the story of childhood sexual abuse, abortion, sexual violence, activism, and the triumph over one's past. It's about FBI harassment and persecution, Jewish heritage, and lesbian identity. It is, finally, about the courage to speak one's truth despite the consequences and to break the sacred silence of family secrets.

Feminist Foremothers in Women's Studies, Psychology, and Mental Health is by and about the more recent wave of feminist foremothers; those who were awakened in the 1960s and '70s to the realization that something was terribly wrong. These are the women who created the fields of feminist therapy, feminist psychology, and women's mental health as they exist today. The 48 women share their life stories in the hope that they will inspire and encourage readers to take their own risks and their own journeys to the outer edges of human possibility. Authors write about what led up to their achievements, what their accomplishments were, and how their lives were consequently changed. They describe their personal stages of development in becoming feminists, from unawareness to activism to action. Some women focus on the painful barriers to success, fame, and social change; others focus on the surprise they experience at how well they, and the women's movement, have done. Some well-known feminist foremothers featured include: Phyllis Chesler Gloria Steinem Kate Millett Starhawk Judy Chicago Zsuszanna Emese Budapest Andrea Dworkin Jean Baker Miller Carol Gilligan In Feminist Foremothers in Women's Studies, Psychology, and Mental Health, many of the women see in hindsight how prior projects and ideas and even dreams were the forerunners to their most important work. They note the importance of sisterhood and the presence of other women and the loneliness and isolation experienced when they don't exist. They note the validation they have received from grassroots feminists in contrast to disbelief from professionals. Although these women have been and continue to be looked up to as foremothers, they realize how little recognition they've been given from society-at-large and how much better off their male counterparts are. Some foremothers write about the feeling of being different, not meshing with the culture of the time and about challenging the system as an outsider, not an insider. These are women who had few mentors, who had to forge their own way, "hit the ground running." Their stories will challenge readers to press on, to continue the work these foremothers so courageously started.Throughout the pages of Feminist Foremothers in Women's Studies, Psychology, and Mental Health runs a sense of excitement and vibrancy of lives lived well, of being there during the early years of the women's movement, of making sacrifices, of taking risks and living to see enormous changes result. Throughout these pages, too, sounds a call not to take these changes for granted but to recognize that feminists, rather than arguing over picayune issues or splitting politically correct hairs, are battling for the very soul of the world.