"Important and innovative."--Feminist Bookstore News

    Throughout Europe and America, artists and intellectuals banded together to portray women as static and unindividuated beings who functioned solely in a sexual and reproductive capacity, thus formulating many of the anti-feminine platitudes that today still constrain women's potential. Bram Dijkstra's Idols of Perversity explores the nature and development of turn-of-the-century misogyny in the works of hundreds of writers, artists, and scientists, including Zola, Strindberg, Wedekind, Henry James, Rossetti, Renoir, Moreau, Klimt, Darwin, and Spencer. Dijkstra demonstrates that the most prejudicial aspects of Evolutionary Theory helped to justify this wave of anti-feminine sentiment. The theory claimed that the female of the species could not participate in the great evolutionary process that would guide the intellectual male to his ultimate, predestined role as a disembodied spiritual essence. Darwinists argued that women hindered this process by their willingness to lure men back to a sham paradise of erotic materialism. To protect the male's continued evolution, artists and intellectuals produced a flood of pseudo-scientific tracts, novels, and paintings which warned the world's males of the evils lying beneath the surface elegance of woman's tempting skin. Reproducing hundreds of pictures from the period and including in-depth discussions of such key works as Dracula and Venus in Furs, this fascinating book not only exposes the crucial links between misogyny then and now, but also connects it to the racism and anti-semitism that led to catastrophic genocidal delusions in the first half of the twentieth century. Crossing the conventional boundaries of art history, sociology, the history of scientific theory, and literary analysis, Dijkstra unveils a startling view of a grim and largely one-sided war on women still being fought today.

    Author Susun Weed proposes an anticancer lifestyle, and, if cancer does enter the picture, a six-step plan for healing (sleep is at zero, or "Do Nothing"; surgery is number six, which she terms "Break and Enter"), with various complementary healing techniques included throughout. Weed is careful to point out that supplements and herbs can hurt as much as they can help, and she lists several alternative-medicine techniques that should be avoided no matter what. The steps she does recommend--from herbal oils for breast massage to help detect lumps early to the herbs milk thistle, dandelion, and burdock for women with liver damage from tamoxifen--are explained clearly, sometimes with fascinating quotes from centuries-old books on healing. Weed will draw ire from some readers for recommending that mammograms be avoided. She says they tend to squeeze cancer cells into the bloodstream and can't detect cancer until it's metastatic, which are reasons enough to not have them, and adds that women would be better off by making her suggested anticancer lifestyle changes, paying more attention to their breasts, and performing regular self-exams. The warnings about the dangers of electromagnetic fields, exposure to estrogen, and organochlorides from plastics may frighten some, but Weed means to enlighten and empower. She dedicates the book to environmentalist and Silent Spring author Rachel Carson and poet Audre Lorde, who both died of breast cancer. Extensive herbal resources, a solid glossary, and a thorough index are included.

    From childhood he has lived in or near the Rockies, hiking, climbing and skiing; watching wildlife and enjoying wildflowers, wild places and wild weather. A desire to know more about the rock he climbed on led Ben to a degree in earth science. He is an independent interpretive guide in Jasper National Park and has written four other books.Ben carried the first edition of the Handbook everywhere in his pack, looking up things he couldn't remember and filling the margins of four copies with blooming times, animal sightings, ideas and corrections. He hopes that all of you with an interest in the Canadian Rockies will enjoy the updated information, new design and full color illustrations of this second edition of the handbook.Artist Matthew Wheeler did the 334 color pencil drawings of mammals, birds and butterflies. Matthew was first recognized for his art at the age of ten, when the Louvre exhibited his painting of children and farm animals watching a train pass by his family's Robson Valley, B.C. farm. Since then, and leading up to the brilliant work reproduced in the pages of this book, Matthew has refined and supported his art by reporting for a local newspaper, selling freelance photography and winning awards at art shows.

    This moving and insightful bestseller, based on in-depth interviews with 135 women, explains why they feel this way. Updated with a new preface exploring how the authors' collaboration and research developed, this tenth anniversary edition addresses many of the questions that the authors have been asked repeatedly in the years since Women's Ways of Knowing was originally published.

    This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions.

    She demonstrates how the thriving and militant feminism of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was undermined, and asserts that the decline of this feminism was due largely to the promotion of a sexual ideology which was hostile to women’s independence. The circumstances about which she writes are frighteningly familiar in the present political climate.

    It is by far the most complete representation of critical theory available, including phenomenologists, structuralists, deconstructionists, Marxists, feminists, reader-response critics, dissenters, and eccentrics, and supplying the background texts necessary of a working understanding of contemporary critical vocabulary and thought.The volume includes selections from Chomsky, Searle, Derrida, Foucault, Frye, Bloom, Kristeva, Fish, Baktin, Berlin, Lacan, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Lukács, Lévi-Strauss, and Blanchot, among many others.

    Dr. Kerr presents current research on gifted girls, summarizes biographies about eminent women, their lives, and achievements, and examines the current educational and family milieu. A very insightful and helpful book for both bright women, and people involved with gifted young girls.

    --Publishers Weekly

    1. Gender as culturally constructed meaning: Iranian sofreh : from collective to female ritual / Laal Jamzadeh and Margaret MillsAmbiguous gender : male initiation in a northern Thai Buddhist society / Charles F. KeyesMen, women, and ghosts in Tainwanese folk religion / Stevan HarrellThe priesthood and motherhood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints / Carolyn M. Wallacept. 2.Gender as polysemic symbol: The portrayal of a female renouncer in a Tamil Buddhist text / Paula RichmanGender and cosmology in Chinese correlative thinking / Alison H. BlackUses of gender imagery in ancient Gnostic texts / Michael A. Williamspt. 3.Gender as point-of-view: Images of gender in the poetry of Krishna / John Stratton Hawley" ... And woman his humanity" : female imagery in the religious writing of the later Middle Ages / Caroline Walker BynumMale and female perspectives on a psychoanalytic myth / John E. Toews.