Journalist and Salon writer Rebecca Traister investigates the 2008 presidential election and its impact on American politics, women and cultural feminism. Examining the role of women in the campaign, from Clinton and Palin to Tina Fey and young voters, Traister confronts the tough questions of what it means to be a woman in today’s America. The 2008 campaign for the presidency reopened some of the most fraught American conversations—about gender, race and generational difference, about sexism on the left and feminism on the right—difficult discussions that had been left unfinished but that are crucial to further perfecting our union. Though the election didn’t give us our first woman president or vice president, the exhilarating campaign was nonetheless transformative for American women and for the nation. In Big Girls Don’t Cry, her electrifying, incisive and highly entertaining first book, Traister tells a terrific story and makes sense of a moment in American history that changed the country’s narrative in ways that no one anticipated. Throughout the book, Traister weaves in her own experience as a thirtysomething feminist sorting through all the events and media coverage—vacillating between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and questioning her own view of feminism, the women’s movement, race and the different generational perspectives of women working toward political parity. Electrifying, incisive and highly entertaining, Big Girls Don’t Cry offers an enduring portrait of dramatic cultural and political shifts brought about by this most historic of American contests.

Gabon’s first female novelist, Angèle Rawiri probed deeper into the issues that writers a generation before her—Mariama Bâ and Aminata Sow Fall—had begun to address. Translated by Sara Hanaburgh, this third novel of the three Rawiri published is considered the richest of her fictional prose. It offers a gripping account of a modern woman, Emilienne, who questions traditional values and seeks emancipation from them. Emilienne’s active search for feminism on her own terms is tangled up with cultural expectations and taboos of motherhood, marriage, polygamy, divorce, and passion. She completes her university studies in Paris; marries a man from another ethnic group; becomes a leader in women’s liberation; enjoys professional success, even earning more than her husband; and eventually takes a female lover. Yet still she remains unsatisfied. Those closest to her, and even she herself, constantly question her role as woman, wife, mother, and lover. The tragic death of her only child—her daughter Rékia—accentuates Emilienne’s anguish, all the more so because of her subsequent barrenness and the pressure that she concede to her husband’s taking a second wife. In her forceful portrayal of one woman’s life in Central Africa in the late 1980s, Rawiri prompts us not only to reconsider our notions of African feminism and the canon of francophone African women’s writing but also to expand our awareness of the issues women face across the world today in the workforce, in the bedroom, and among family and peers.

Brings together the words of welfare mothers, activists and advocates, as well as scholars in a poignant and powerful challenge to the impoverishment of women.

Tired of inauthentic prattle, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America Penny Young Nance is ready to change the way women today engage the culture. In her debut title, Feisty & Feminine, she takes an honest and transparent look at what it means to be a conservative Christian woman with thoughtful commentary on the real issues confronting American women. “Conservative women have never fit neatly into stereotypes, especially conservative Christian women,” says Penny Young Nance. “We’re not the humorless, dim-witted ‘church ladies’ Saturday Night Live has made us out to be. Today’s conservative women are intelligent, well-educated, compassionate, accomplished, funny, and fearless—and it’s time for us to stand up and be heard. In fact, we have an opportunity like never before to offer words of redemption to a world gone mad.” From Miley Cyrus to campus feminists, it’s clear that women are still searching for their voice in culture today. With Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016, there is even more of a need for a compelling, conservative, and credible female influence in the mix. Penny Nance is that woman. She is direct without being disrespectful, winsome but not shallow, and relevant while still holding to faith and conservative values. Accepting the baton of leadership from their foremothers, today’s conservatives have emerged as intelligent, hard-working women of faith who not only deal with issues like life and marriage, but are also advocates for the free market, for rights of conscience, and for female victims of radical Islam. Passionate about their role in society, they refuse to turn a blind eye to the sexual exploitation of women or the hypocrisy surrounding women’s issues. The time is right for this book—and for conservative women everywhere to be part of the conversation.

This bestselling "lyrical, moving book: part essay, part memoir, part surprising cultural study" is an examination of why we cry, how we cry, and what it means to cry from a woman on the cusp of motherhood confronting her own depression (The New York Times Book Review). Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen–tear–shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear–collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women’s tears play in racist violence. Honest, intelligent, rapturous, and surprising, Christle’s investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy.

Navigating the workplace, especially in the highly visible world of news media, is more confusing and challenging for women than ever before. There’s No Crying in Newsrooms tells the stories of women who have made it to the top of the nation’s news organizations and describes what it takes to be a leader – and what it costs.

Based on interviews with women academics, engineers, politicians, mathematicians, neurologists and others in male dominated organizations as well as the author's own experiences, this book will offer insights and advice to women who aspire to top positions in companies and industries where men traditionally have held those positions.