Book picks similar to
Women and States by Ann E. Towns


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No Filter


Grace Victory - 2017
    After years of self-loathing and self-destructive behaviour, she hit an all-time low but thanks to therapy, good friends and an award-winning blog, she has rebuilt herself to become a TV presenter and an inspirational role model for young people. Thanks to her bravery, instinctive honesty and ability to break down taboos, Grace is now able to speak openly about her personal battles and she regularly offers guidance to her legion of fans.Brimming with hilarious anecdotes and no-nonsense advice, the Internet's Big Sister tells you everything you need to know about accepting yourself and fighting back, in style.

The Revolt of Mother


Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - 1891
    Each book in the series has been designed with today's young reader in mind. As the words come to life, students will develop a lasting appreciation for great literature.The humor of Mark Twain...the suspense of Edgar Allan Poe...the danger of Jack London...the sensitivity of Katherine Mansfield. Creative Short Stories has it all and will prove to be a welcome addition to any library.

How to Feel the Fear and Eat It Anyway: How to Eat Everything (and Stop Worrying About it)


Eve Simmons - 2019
    Our mindless obsession with eating 'right' is such that we're now more concerned about what our Instagram followers think of a poorly lit picture of our dinner than we are of its effect on our own palate. Or, indeed, our happiness. We seem to be living in a time where we no longer eat with our hearts, emotions or heritage - but with what our waistlines (and followers) in mind.Not Plant Based are on a mission to help you love food again. The principle is very simple: eat what you like and don't worry about it. It's a menu that's especially delicious, 'guilt-free' and requires a hell of a lot less money spent in health food shops. Throughout the book, Laura and Eve call on experts to debunk myths and provide a balanced exploration of our attitude towards food, with some delicious recipes thrown in along the way. They discuss their own experiences of eating disorders and offer personal tips and coping mechanisms to help rid you of anxiety linked to food. No one is saying healthy eating is bad; there is simply a lot of misleading information out there. More to the point, food is so much more in the grand scheme of life than health: it's family, friends, enjoyment and memories. So go on, take a bite out of How To Eat Everything and learn to love your food all over again. It's SO mouth-wateringly good - we bet you'll be back for seconds.

Generation F: Why we still struggle with sex and power


Virginia Trioli - 2019
      The Master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne had been acquitted of indecent assault after complaints by two female students. Helen Garner’s bestselling book about the case, The First Stone, polarised readers over whether the students had been right to take their allegations to the law. Was the feminist movement poisoning gender relations?   In Generation F, the young award-winning journalist Virginia Trioli offered a vigorous, incisive and compelling argument for the ongoing need for feminism, while exploring her own bewilderment and anger. She described the real state of sexual harassment, violence, the workplace and the law in Australia: how most women just copped it, but those who felt able to confront it needed all the support they could get.   Now – as women around the world speak up about how sexual harassment has destroyed their work, families and lives – Trioli revisits that cultural moment in a new foreword, and in a new afterword considers the situation women face today.   Dismayingly, her original text is just as relevant, and her call to action just as powerful.

Smoke in the Room


Emily Maguire - 2009
    Holed up in a tiny flat during a Sydney summer American Adam, weary activist Graeme and wild Katie are each searching for life's biggest questions: why are we here; what is love; what constitutes betrayal and over an intense two-week period they begin to form answers and in doing so confront their darkest demons.

Saudade


Traci Brimhall - 2017
    Inspired by stories from her Brazilian-born mother, Traci Brimhall’s third collection—a lush and startling “autobiomythography”—is reminiscent of the rich imaginative worlds of Latin American magical realists. Set in the Brazilian Amazon, Saudade is one part ghost story, one part revival, populated by a colorful cast of characters and a recurring chorus of irreverent Marias.

Well...THAT Was Awkward


Megan Montgomery - 2020
    Medallion!John and Em meet on the boardwalk as the moonlight dances off the Chesapeake Bay.She thinks he’s gorgeous and comes down with a case of instalove.He thinks she’s a panhandler and gives her five dollars.The embarrassment is enough to send Em running for a life makeover. The only problem is, she’s spent the last decade looking after everyone else in her little town and now she’s totally forgotten how to self-care.Adding to that garbage heap of a situation is tonight’s blind date.Of course it turns out to be the man who mistook her for homeless. And, of course, he’s a Navy test pilot stationed a stone’s throw away from her antiques shop. All the whiskey and chocolate in the café can’t help the awkwardness between Em and this cold and stoic modern-Mr. Darcy.Fortunately, their tiny, tight-knit community won’t let one (or two) bad nights come between what everyone knows might just be an uncannily perfect couple.When they both let down their guard, Em and John’s chemistry creates more sparks than a jet's afterburners, but there’s a lot to lose if she tries—and fails—at this relationship.Unless she decides to trust John to help her navigate, Em might be stuck circling the runway in a loveless holding pattern.

The Kaunteyas


Madhavi S. Mahadevan - 2016
    At fourteen she is pressed into the service of the temperamental sage Durvasa who grants her a boon. Its first use, however, only brings her adversity and a shameful secret. With marriage to Pandu, Kunti dreams of a better future, but a curse makes him leave the throne of Hastinapur to his sibling, the blind Dhritarashtra, and retreat to the forest. The births of the five Pandavas rekindle Kunti’s hopes of returning to Hastinapur, but these are destroyed once again when Pandu dies suddenly. Kunti journeys to the kingdom, no longer its queen but a widow, a dependant as are her sons. She must now take up the task of guiding them through the long struggle to get their inheritance, a struggle made harder by the discovery that the illegitimate child she had abandoned long ago is alive and a sworn enemy of the Pandavas. Recasting the Mahabharata from the viewpoint of Kunti, The Kaunteyas replaces the idealized mother figure with a fully three-dimensional woman, providing new insights into the epic.

American Turnaround: Reinventing AT and GM and the Way We Do Business in the USA


Edward E. Whitacre - 2013
    In this business memoir, the native Texan explores his unique management style, business acumen and patriotism. It was President Obama who reached out to Ed Whitacre to come out of retirement and take over GM in 2009. A down-to-earth, no-nonsense Texas native with a distinctive Texas twang in his voice, Whitacre was reluctant to come out of retirement to work at GM. But Whitacre is that rare CEO with great charisma and extraordinary management instincts. And when he got to Detroit, he started to whittle down the corporate bureaucracy right away - and got GM back on track in record time. Before being pulled out of retirement to run GM by Obama, Ed Whitacre had spent his entire corporate career in the telecom business, where he ultimately ended up running AT&T.

Prudent Advice: Lessons for My Baby Daughter (A Life List for Every Woman)


Jamie Morrison Curtis - 2010
    These are the rules of contemporary wisdom rewritten for our time—the new adages to be passed from woman to woman that represent the best advice about mastering life in our complex twenty-first century era. Illustrated with four-color art throughout.Prudent Advice isn't what your mother taught you--it's more. Delivering 500 mini-lessons meant to educate and entertain, Curtis writes with wit and fresh insight into motherhood wrought from her own experiences and those of her blog followers. Time-honored canons such as "Dress appropriately for work" and "You reap what you sow" mingle with more unconventional prudence such as "Talk to strangers" and "Don't be afraid to get lost." She teaches how to jump-start a battery and make summer squash with goat cheese pasta--everything a mother wants for her little girl.Curtis emphasizes the importance of being ethical, practicing kindness, thinking for oneself, and seeing the beauty in everything and everyone, especially on the inside. This compelling guide also offers poetry, inspirational quotes, and recipes meant to embellish cultural perspective and cultivate a well-rounded, sophisticated woman. Prudent Advice will inspire mothers and daughters to celebrate their differences while unearthing shared core values that bond them together as family.

The Return: Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev


Daniel Treisman - 2010
    Since shaking off communism two decades ago, the country has seemed wobbly at best, thoroughly corrupt and threatening at worst. But in recent years, as noted scholar Daniel Treisman shows in this compelling account, Russia has re-emerged as a pivotal nation in world affairs. In The Return, Treisman cuts through the myths and misinformation, as well as ongoing academic and journalistic debates, to present a portrait of a strong and independent country that is returning to the international community on its own terms. Drawing on two decades of research, interviews, and insider observation, The Return provides the first comprehensive history of post-communist Russia. From Gorbachev to Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev, it traces the twists and turns of the country’s evolution, uncovering the causes behind Russia’s plunge into depression in the 1990s and resurgence since 2000. Rather than a nation frozen in ancient authoritarian traditions, as Russia is often portrayed, Treisman shows a society modernizing rapidly, with a government that, although less than democratic, is sensitive to public opinion but which has been repeatedly buffeted by economic forces—the collapse of Soviet planning, the gyrations of oil prices—that have alternately boosted and drained the leaders’ popularity. Knocked off balance once again by the global financial crisis, the Kremlin’s current bosses must now struggle to reignite the growth on which the stability of their regime depends.As Russia grapples with its economic difficulties, the West will have to come to terms with the new Russia. With its UN Security Council veto, thousands of atomic warheads, continental dimensions, and vast mineral resources, Moscow sits at the epicenter of the toughest challenges the world will confront in the next generation—from Islamic terrorism and nuclear proliferation to energy security and global warming. To enlist Russia’s cooperation in solving the problems of the twenty-first century, Western leaders will need to look beyond common misconceptions to see the country as it is rather than as it has often been imagined or depicted.Based on extensive research by an expert with intimate knowledge of the country, the book provides insight into the prospects for democracy in Russia, the challenges and opportunities of doing business there, the wars in Chechnya, and the motives behind Moscow’s foreign policy. The Return is the ultimate accounting of what Russia is today, how it got there, and where it’s going.

The Pippi Longstocking 4-Book Set: Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Goes on Board, Pippi in the South Seas, and Pippi on the Run


Astrid Lindgren - 2008
    64-128 pages each.

The Underachieving Ovary


J.T. Lawrence - 2016
    It’s funny, and (sometimes alarmingly) frank. It contains an impressive array of synonyms for ‘vagina’ and it’s certainly NSFW.It’s about having a devil womb and a hot knife lodged in my shoulder. It’s about becoming blackly bitter and twisted in my infertility, and then slowly finding a way to untwist myself.It’s part memoir, part dark comedy, wrapped up loosely as a journal full of TMI and quirk.Let me put it this way: If Helen Fielding and Marian Keyes were to go through IVF, and use Caitlin Moran as a surrogate, this book would be their baby.

Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers


Susan Morrison - 2008
    As America's first viable female candidate for president, she has become the repository of many women's contradictory hopes and fears. To some she's a sellout who changed her name and her hairstyle when it suited her husband's career; to others she's a hardworking idealist with the political savvy to work effectively within the system. Where one person sees a carpetbagger, another sees a dedicated politician; where one sees a humiliated and long-suffering wife, another sees a dignified First Lady. Is she tainted by the scandals of her husband's presidency, or has she gained experience and authority from weathering his missteps? Cold or competent, overachiever or pioneer, too radical or too moderate, Hillary Clinton continues to overturn the assumptions we make about her.In Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary, New Yorker editor Susan Morrison has compiled this timely collection of thirty original pieces by America's most notable women writers. This pointillistic portrait paints a composite picture of Hillary Clinton, focusing on details from the personal to the political, from the hard-hitting to the whimsical, to give a well-balanced and unbiased view of the woman who may be our first Madam President. Taken together, these essays—by such renowned writers as Daphne Merkin, Lorrie Moore, Deborah Tannen, Susan Cheever, Lionel Shriver Kathryn Harrison, and Susan Orlean—illuminate the attitudes that women have toward the powerful women around them and constitute a biography that is must reading for anyone interested in understanding this complex and controversial politician.

Slam


Cecily von Ziegesar - 2000
    B. Yeats, Tupac Shakur or Sylvia Plath. Slams -- spoken word poetry readings -- are taking place in cities across the country.Slam contains the words of the famous, the infamous, the soon-to-be-famous, as well as the authentic and anonymous voices of real teenagers culled from Alloy.com. From John Ashbury's thoughts on the creative process to Tori Amos' take on rhyme, rhythm, and reason, this book showcases not only these artists' poems, but their inspirations.Brought to life with original artwork, photographs, and unique visual style, Slam speaks to the budding poet in every teen.