Elevate Difference

Reviews by Janine Peterson Wonnacott

The Baby Lottery

Kathryn Trueblood takes on the weighty issues of motherhood in the age of abortion in her first novel, The Baby Lottery. (Trueblood is also the author of a book of short stories, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter.) Her characters are a circle of friends who have stayed together from college into their thirties. One is preparing for an abortion and coping with an overbearing husband. One is a nurse working with abortion providers.

She's Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff

A collection of essays by women geeks? What can self-professed geeks share with the rest of women about what it means to be female? A heck of a lot, whether you measure it in decimal or binary.

Life Skills: Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology

Life Skills serves as a great introduction to the nebulous field of metapsychology, a variation on the newly popular field of positive psychology. The book attempts to use the tools of psychoanalysis to provide a guide for emotional self-improvement. And it succeeds.

Global Sense: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace (An Update of “Common Sense”)

Judah Freed has opinions about government that seem inline with progressive thought. The government is corrupt. People in government are too removed from the people – both through the need for security and from a reliance on special interest money over common people’s votes – to be appropriately representative.

Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation

Cutting isn’t just about cutting. It’s about burning, fainting, fingernail scratches, hospital visits, and apparent suicide attempts. It’s about what the author calls self-mutilation (though many sufferers prefer the term "self-injury" as "mutilation" implies that the goal is the scar, which isn’t always the case). These girls (and they are mostly girls) act out their anger or sadness on their own skin, inflicting pain but not attempting suicide.