A rare first-person account of the women's movement

A comprehensive, indexed memoir about the Second Wave women’s movement by the cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Muriel Fox offers rare, firsthand stories of 29 women and one man, including Betty Freidan, but also many who have not previously been recognized for their contributions.

As NOW's public relations director, Fox orchestrated nationwide outreach. She was NOW's vice president, then chair of the board, then chaired the National Advisory Committee. As Betty Friedan's main lieutenant and director of operations, Fox drafted numerous letters sent by NOW under Friedan's signature to government officials demanding faster action to reduce sex discrimination, including a letter that helped persuade President Lyndon Johnson to add gender to Affirmative Action and open opportunities for millions of women.

Unlike books relying on secondary sources, Fox's memoir is built mainly from her own Feminism Files containing hundreds of letters, clippings, notes, and photographs that she archived.

Winner, 2021 PROSE Award in the Cultural Anthropology & Sociology Category

Finalist, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies

A troubling account of heterosexual desire in the era of #MeToo

Heterosexuality is in crisis. Reports of sexual harassment, misconduct, and rape saturate the news in the era of #MeToo. Straight men and women spend thousands of dollars every day on relationship coaches, seduction boot camps, and couple’s therapy in a search for happiness.

In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward smartly explores what, exactly, is wrong with heterosexuality in the twenty-first century, and what straight people can do to fix it for good. She shows how straight women, and to a lesser extent straight men, have tried to mend a fraught patriarchal system in which intimacy, sexual fulfillment, and mutual respect are expected to coexist alongside enduring forms of inequality, alienation, and violence in straight relationships.

Ward also takes an intriguing look at the multi-billion-dollar self-help industry, which markets goods and services to help heterosexual couples without addressing the root of their problems. Ultimately, she encourages straight men and women to take a page out of queer culture, reminding them “about the human capacity to desire, fuck, and show respect at the same time.”

A courtside view of how women athletes’ identities are policed, on and off the court

Women’s college basketball is big business—top teams bring in millions of dollars in revenue for their schools. Women’s NCAA games are broadcast regularly on sports networks, and many of the top players and coaches are household names. Yet these athletes face immense pressure to be more than successful at their sport. They must also conform to expectations about gender, sexuality, and race—expectations that are often in direct contrast to success in the game. They are not supposed to have muscles that are too big, they are not supposed to be too tough, they are not supposed to be too masculine or “look like men,” and they are not supposed to be queer.

A former college athlete herself, Michelle J. Manno spent a full season with a highly competitive NCAA Division I women’s basketball program as one of the team’s managers. In vivid detail, she takes us on the court, on the team bus, into the locker room, and to championship games to show the intense dedication that these women give to the game. She found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that these extremely talented women were strictly policed around the presentation of their gender and sexuality, especially the athletes who were Black. They were routinely monitored, banned from engaging in certain activities, and often punished for behavior that put their queerness, Blackness, and masculinity on display. Convincingly conforming to conventional expectations of gender and sexuality—from the clothes they wore to the people they dated—was yet another challenge at which they needed to excel. Importantly, Manno also highlights several well-known contemporary professional athletes—Brittney Griner, Serena Williams, Gabby Douglas, and Caster Semenya, among others—to show that fame and performing at the highest levels in sport does not protect women athletes from having to navigate the conflicting and often contradictory expectations of identity.

A riveting portrait of an elite basketball program, Denied will forever change our understanding of women athletes and the sports they play.

When Jennifer Case became pregnant unexpectedly with her second child, she was overwhelmed at the prospect of caring for another child in a society with high expectations and low support for mothers. She sought to reclaim control over, if not her changing body, then at least her rapidly declining mental health. Immersing herself in research, Case learned that the United States has one of the highest maternal death rates among developed countries. One in every five women develops a mental health issue as a result of pregnancy. It became clear to her that in order to address the sexism and isolation mothers face—including the racism that further marginalizes women of color—we must recognize these as social problems that affect us all

We Are Animals draws attention to these issues by examining key moments in Case’s life where her experience as both a woman in twenty-first-century America and a child-bearing mammal, and the conflicts between these two identities, were brought into sharp relief. From the surprising salve of parasocial interactions on baby forums to the not so surprisingly intertwined history of industrial dairy farming and wearable breast pumps, Case explores an array of realities that give historical and cultural context to the experience of motherhood.

The essays collected here offer a balm for women who have struggled in silence over childbirth trauma, conflicted responses to motherhood, or a deeply felt intuition that what their bodies needed as mothers did not match what society provided. They also offer a much needed, nuanced perspective for policymakers, activists, and medical professionals who continue to shape women’s experience of motherhood.

PROSE Award Winner for Biography and Autobiography

Named one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2023

Winner, Next Generation Indie Book Awards - Women's Nonfiction

Offers thought-provoking theories and life-transforming ways to deal with pain

What can we ask of pain? How can we be more creative and courageous in carrying pain in our lives? In this genre-bending work that is equal parts memoir and scholarly criticism, L. Ayu Saraswati provides thought-provoking theories and life-transforming ways to understand pain, specifically in relation to feminism. Arguing that pain is not merely a state we are in, Scarred reframes pain as a “transnational feminist object,” something that we can carry across international borders. Drawing on her own experience traveling across twenty countries within just over a year, Saraswati aims to bring readers along on her journey so that they might ask themselves, “How can I live with pain differently?”

By using pain as a lens of feminist analysis, Scarred allows us to chart how power produces and operates through pain, and how pain is embodied and embedded in relationships. Saraswati provides a heartfelt and engaging recount of her experiences while also pushing the boundaries of the respective fields her story engages with. She allows for renewed academic and personal insights to blossom by using a blend of transnational feminist theory, travel studies, and pain studies. Ultimately, Scarred invites us to reframe pain and ask how might we carry it in a more humane, life-sustaining, enchanting, and feminist way.

"A lively medical, scientific, and economic history."—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Best Nonfiction Books of 2024, Kirkus Reviews

A groundbreaking genealogy of for-profit healthcare and an urgent reminder that centering women's history offers vital opportunities for shaping the future.

The running joke in Europe for centuries was that anyone in a hurry to die should call the doctor. As far back as ancient Greece, physicians were notorious for administering painful and often fatal treatments—and charging for the privilege. For the most effective treatment, the ill and injured went to the women in their lives. This system lasted hundreds of years. It was gone in less than a century.

Contrary to the familiar story, medication did not improve during the Scientific Revolution. Yet somehow, between 1650 and 1740, the domestic female and the physician switched places in the cultural consciousness: she became the ineffective, potentially dangerous quack, he the knowledgeable, trustworthy expert. The professionals normalized the idea of paying them for what people already got at home without charge, laying the foundation for Big Pharma and today’s global for-profit medication system. A revelatory history of medicine, The Apothecary’s Wife challenges the myths of the triumph of science and instead uncovers the fascinating truth. Drawing on a vast body of archival material, Karen Bloom Gevirtz depicts the extraordinary cast of characters who brought about this transformation. She also explores domestic medicine’s values in responses to modern health crises, such as the eradication of smallpox, and what benefits we can learn from these events.