The Goddess Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths that Shape Women's Lives


Jennifer Barker Woolger - 1989
    Two Jungian psychologists discuss the influence the classic Greek goddesses have on a woman's psyche and how women can bring the different goddess energies into harmony for greater strength and new insights into their lives.

Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitude


Trina Robbins - 2001
    Feminist cartoonist Robbins takes off the gloves and tells the tales of twenty not-so-sweet, totally immoderate, and utterly enjoyable goddesses, including Jezebel, Kali, and others.

American Legends: The Life of James Cagney


Charles River Editors - 2013
    *Includes Cagney's own quotes about his life and career. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. *Includes a table of contents. "You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them...I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can." – James Cagney A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. When the American Film Institute assembled its top 100 actors of all time at the close of the 20th century, one of the Top 10 was James Cagney, an actor whose acting and dancing talents spawned a stage and film career that spanned over 5 decades and once compelled Orson Welles to call him "maybe the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera." Indeed, his portrayal of “The Man Who Owns Broadway”, George M. Cohan, earned him an Academy Award in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, and as famed director Milos Forman once put it, "I think he's some kind of genius. His instinct, it's just unbelievable. I could just stay at home. One of the qualities of a brilliant actor is that things look better on the screen than the set. Jimmy has that quality." Ultimately, it was portraying tough guys and gangsters in the 1930s that turned Cagney into a massive Hollywood star, and they were the kind of roles he was literally born to play after growing up rough in Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. In movies like The Public Enemy (which included the infamous “grapefruit scene”) and White Heat, Cagney convincingly played criminals that brought Warner to the forefront of Hollywood and the gangster genre. Cagney also helped pave the way for younger actors in the genre, like Humphrey Bogart, and he was so good that he found himself in danger of being typecast. While Cagney is no longer remembered as fondly or as well as Bogart, he was also crucial in helping establish the system in which actors worked as independent workers free from the constraints of studios. Refusing to be pushed around, Cagney was constantly involved in contract squabbles with Warner, and he often came out on top, bucking the conventional system that saw studios treat their stars as indentured servants who had to make several films a year. American Legends: The Life of James Cagney examines the life and career of one of Hollywood’s most iconic actors. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Cagney like never before, in no time at all.

Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations


bell hooks - 1994
    Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a 'powerful site for intervention, challenge and change'. And intervene, challenge and change is what hooks does best.

I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban


Malala Yousafzai - 2012
    When I almost died it was just after midday.When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy


Gerda Lerner - 1993
    The Creation of Patriarchy, the first book in her two-volume magnum opus Women and History (1986) received wide review attention and much acclaim, winning the prestigious Joan Kelly Prize of the American Historical Association for the best work on Women's History that year. Ms hailed the book for providing a grand historical framework that was impossible even to imagine before the enlightenment about women's place in the world provided by her earlier work and that of other feminist scholars. New Directions for Women said it may well be the most important work in feminist theory to appear in our generation. Patriarchy traced the development of the ideas, symbols, and metaphors by which men institutionalized their domination of women. Now, in The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, the eagerly awaited concluding volume of Women and History, Lerner documents the twelve-hundred-year struggle of women to free their minds from patriarchal thought, to create Women's History, and to achieve a feminist consciousness. In a richly documented narrative filled with inspiring portraits of women, Lerner ranges from the Middle Ages to the late 19th century, tracing several important ways by which women strove for autonomy and equality. One of the most remarkable sections examines over twelve hundred years of feminist Bible criticism. Since objections to women's thinking, teaching, and speaking in public were based on biblical authority--most notably, passages from Genesis and the writings of St. Paul--women returned again and again to these texts, in an attempt to subvert patriarchal dominance and establish their equality with men. This survey of biblical criticism allows Lerner to illustrate her most important insight--the discontinuity of women's history. She describes how women's history was not passed on from generation to generation, forcing women in effect to reinvent the wheel over and over again. In a series of fascinating portraits of individual women who resisted patriarchal indoctrination, Lerner discusses women mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich and later Protestant mystics, and brings to life the many women of great literary talent, from Christine de Pisan to Louise Labe to Emily Dickinson, who simply bypassed patriarchal thought and created alternate worlds for themselves. Documenting the 1,200 year struggle of women to free their minds from patriarchal thought, create a women's history, and achieve a feminist consciousness, this brilliant work charts new ground for feminist theory, the history of ideas, and the development of women's place in our intellectual tradition.

David The Great: Deconstructing the Man After God's Own Heart


Mark Rutland - 2018
    But too often he is viewed as an Americanized shepherd boy on a Sunday school felt board or a New Testament saint alongside the Virgin Mary. Not only does this neglect one of the Bible’s most complex stories of sin and redemption; it also bypasses the gritty life lessons inherent in the amazing true story of David.  Mark Rutland shreds the felt-board character, breaks down the sculpted marble statue, and unearths the real David of the Bible. Both noble and wretched, neither a saint nor a monster, at times victorious and other times a failure, David was through it all a man after God’s own heart.

Votes For Women!: The Pioneers and Heroines of Female Suffrage (from the pages of A History of Britain in 21 Women)


Jenni Murray - 2018
    Set against the backdrop of a world where equality is still to be achieved, it is a vital reminder of the great women who fought for change.

The Book of Goddesses


Kris Waldherr - 1996
    This fully illustrated, greatly expanded edition of Kris Waldherr's best-selling classic includes 100 goddesses (74 more than the original edition) along with their stories, symbolic significance and cultural roles applicable to life today. While the original book was structured alphabetically - one goddess for every letter of the alphabet - this new edition is structured around the feminine rites of passage: Beginnings, Love, Motherhood, Creativity, Strength and Transformations. Lavishly designed, this visually stunning book is testament to the power, passion, wisdom and beauty of women of all ages, all stages in life, everywhere.

Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines


Jeannine Davis-Kimball - 2002
    From China to Celtic lands, warriors, priestesses, and matriarchs come to life in this accessible and dramatic account of one archaeologist's search for the truth. Jeannine Davis-Kimball, a real-life Indiana Jones, recounts her exciting and dangerous career uncovering the real story behind Amazons, banshees, and mummies. Within all these groups, Davis-Kimball has uncovered an entire ancient class of courageous women who played vital and respected roles. "Warrior Women" is the first mainstream book to explore the lost world of women warriors that stretches from Europe to Asia. What emerges is not only a thrilling and exotic ride, but a provocative re-examination of gender roles for the 21st century.

Hunter S. Thompson: The Playboy Interview


Hunter S. Thompson - 2012
    It covered jazz, of course, but it also included Davis’s ruminations on race, politics and culture. Fascinated, Hef sent the writer—future Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Alex Haley, an unknown at the time—back to glean even more opinion and insight from Davis. The resulting exchange, published in the September 1962 issue, became the first official Playboy Interview and kicked off a remarkable run of public inquisition that continues today—and that has featured just about every cultural titan of the last half century.To celebrate the Interview’s 50th anniversary, the editors of Playboy have culled 50 of its most (in)famous Interviews and will publish them over the course of 50 weekdays (from September 4, 2012 to November 12, 2012) via Amazon’s Kindle Direct platform. Here is the interview with the journalist Hunter S. Thompson from the November 1974 issue.

Big Girls Don't Whine: Getting On With the Great Life God Intends


Jan Silvious - 2003
    God never intended for us to act like "little girls," says Jan Silvious. His goal is for each of us to live as "big girls"-mature Christian women-who are capable of enjoying the richness of life He has planned.In Big Girls Don't Whine, Jan helps women:Move beyond the past and on to healthy relationships, Choose to be proactive rather than let life just "happen,"Discover their full potential,And become everything He made them to be.So how can we tell if we're living life as an immature 'little girl" or a confident "big girl?"A little girl…Is insecureBecomes the victim of circumstancesSays "I can't"ManipulatesA big girl…Is secureRests in God's sovereigntySays, "I can"CommunicatesIn Big Girls Don't Whine, Jan Silvious calls us to be real women in a real world, free to experience a life of full of potential and vision. This book is the how-to manual for making it happen.

The Price We Paid


Andrew Olsen - 2010
    Though tragic, it is also a story of triumph that scarcely has an equal. It is one of history's great witnesses of the power of faith and sacrifice. Although this story is one of the most frequently told of all Mormon pioneer accounts, it is also among the least understood. This book provides the most comprehensive and accessible account of these pioneers' epic 1856 journey. In addition to painting a broad perspective of the trek, it includes dozens of personal stories from the pioneers themselves. Woven into the larger story of the journey west, these stories inspire, build faith, recount miracles, and reveal how these pioneers were able to endure such adversity. The book also includes chapters on the lives of many of these pioneers after the handcart trek. Immerse yourself in the challenges and miracles of this astounding odyssey as never before!

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala


Karen L. King - 2003
    Karen L. King tells the story of the recovery of this remarkable gospel and offers a new translation. This brief narrative rejects Jesus' suffering and death as a path to eternal life and exposes the view that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute for what it is--a piece of theological fiction. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala offers a fascinating glimpse into the conflicts and controversies that shaped earliest Christianity.

Pope Joan


Donna Woolfolk Cross - 1996
    She is the legend that will not die–Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Donna Woolfolk Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak–and his identity–and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom–wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price . . .In this international bestseller, Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.