Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution

Mary Lucille Sullivan attempts to tackle the world's oldest profession, but provides more questions than answers. When the State of Victoria in Australia became one of the first governments in the world to legalize prostitution in 1984, both residents and the rest of the world wondered how this radical law would affect women's role in this underground, but very active workforce. Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution investigates whether the ladies of the night in Victoria are expanding or diminishing the sex industry.

Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy

Who hasn’t done it? Who hasn’t bought that extra cup of yogurt or that pink scarf that matches nothing in the closet just to show support for the breast cancer cause? Most women have seen what breast cancer can do in the lives of real women, whether we have endured it first-hand or watched a loved one struggle to survive. I have always felt that sweet inner glow after making a purchase if I knew that a small percentage of the proceeds would go to support breast cancer research. As a consumer, I felt that I was doing my part.

Pretty Little Mistakes

Apparently back in the day, there was such a thing as a chose your own ending book. Until I picked up Heather McElhatton’s Pretty Little Mistakes, I had never read one. After reading the book, I am glad I hadn’t. I am fairly certain there was never the option to become a drug dealer in Europe or marry the abusive crystal meth addict doctor in Berkeley.

Sophie’s World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy

An international bestseller when it was first published over a decade ago, Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World has recently been re-released with a new appendix consisting of a short set of thematic and plot-related questions. Gaarder’s novel, brilliant in its philosophical scope and concision, narrates the intellectual maturation of its protagonist, Sophie Amundsen, a fourteen-year-old girl living in Norway. The novel is comprised of brief synopses of major philosophical theories and figures, from classical myth to twentieth century existentialism, from Socrates to Beauvoir.

Skylight Confessions

After eighteen novels and eight children’s books one might think Alice Hoffman would run out of material in which to write, but her new book, Skylight Confessions, proves this theory wrong. She takes an everyday, dysfunctional family and breathes her own twist into it, coupled with a splash of supernatural. Skylight Confessions is set in a house appropriately named The Glass Slipper because it is constructed of metal and glass panes.

New Orleans Noir

Unlike every other volume of short stories I've read, none of the stories in this book disappointed me. Written by authors who live or have lived in the Big Easy, New Orleans Noir digs below the surface and into the social fabric of a city that had its troubles long before Hurricane Katrina. To say that it pushes the reader out of her comfort zone would be a major understatement. The collection is divided into two parts: pre- and post- Katrina.

Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants

Young, white, educated, and pretty: these were the most essential job criteria early flight attendants (then called “stewardesses”) were required to meet. As a selective few catering to the affluent traveler, flight attendants in the early days of aviation held a seemingly glamorous job, one that was coveted in an era when a white women’s work often extended only to the front door of her home. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M.

Regaining Control: When Love Becomes a Prison

Sad to say, I wasn’t really too surprised by Tami Brady’s intended bombshell statistic that only 1% of the world’s assets are in the name of women. It has been my personal experience that I’ve met very few women who aren’t either overt or covert aggressive, control freaks, or - at the other end of the extreme - fearful and dependent. Both types are insecure.

The Hanging of Angelique

The history of Canadian black slavery is a story quite often untold. The Hanging of Angelique opens the doors to the unknown. After fifteen years of research, Afua Cooper brings to light the “untold story of Canadian slavery and the burning of Old Montreal”. Cooper weaves together crucial historical facts that are often unspoken, and similar to the many stories that Americans have heard over time.

ARTitude Zine (Issue #23: Winter 2006)

Sweet and sincere, ARTitude Zine includes well-written articles by and about artists and their processes, nifty project ideas with full instructions, and full-color pages displaying readers’ work.

One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers

Are there lessons to be learned from the interminable nightmare in Iraq? Was more heartbreaking instruction needed, even after My Lai and William Calley and Zippo raids? The media, with its relentless blather about heroism, simply can’t accommodate the postmodern ambiguity in the story of Private Jessica Lynch or the fragging death of Pat Tillman.

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters

Jessica Valenti is a part of the feminist blogger elite, and for good reason. The blog she helped to establish, Feministing.com, receives a significant amount of web traffic and is well-known among young, internet savvy, hip feminists. Full disclosure: I read Feministing every now and then. Having read Valenti’s writing on the blog—which tends to be oversimplified and, quite frankly, bratty—I was hoping her analysis in book form would show a tad more depth.

Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet

The year is 2007. We can still see the impressive footsteps of Betty Friedman, Margaret Sanger, and Gloria Steinem in the sands of time, yet women, as a whole, seem more concerned with which pop icon has fallen from grace, or how their Coach bag stands up against the other soccer moms' Gucci one. I don't carry a handbag, and I don't watch much TV, yet this book was a sobering and gentle call to action.

Always

Norwegian Aud Torvingen was born into a life of wealth and privilege. The former police officer gives back to the community by teaching women self-defense. The new women in her latest course cross all social and financial lines so that a southern society belle is on an even footing with a housewife. The women savor each other’s triumphs until one day one of them has to put into practice what she learned. After dealing with officials following the woman’s act, Aud flies to Seattle where she owns property that she must clean up as her property manager violated OSHA and EPA rules.