Men and women remain unequal in the United States, but in this provocative book, Robert Max Jackson demonstrates that gender inequality is irrevocably crumbling. Destined for Equality, the first integrated analysis of gender inequality's modern decline, tells the story of that progressive movement toward equality over the past two centuries in America, showing that women's status has risen consistently and continuously. Jackson asserts that women's rising status has been due largely to the emergence of modern political and economic organizations, which have transformed institutional priorities concerning gender. Although individual politicians and businessmen generally believed women should remain in their traditional roles, Jackson shows that it was simply not in the interests of modern enterprise and government to foster inequality. The search for profits, votes, organizational rationality, and stability all favored a gender-neutral approach that improved women's status. The inherent gender impartiality of organizational interests won out over the prejudiced preferences of the men who ran them. As economic power migrated into large-scale organizations inherently indifferent to gender distinctions, the patriarchal model lost its social and cultural sway, and women's continual efforts to rise in the world became steadily more successful. Total gender equality will eventually prevail; the only questions remaining are what it will look like, and how and when it will arrive.

Profiles women who achieved positions of national leadership in the 1930s under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration.

With Sigmund Freud notoriously flummoxed about what women want, any encounter between psychoanalysis and feminism would seem to promise a standoff. But in this lively, often surprising history, Mari Jo Buhle reveals that the twentieth century's two great theories of liberation actually had a great deal to tell each other. Starting with Freud's 1909 speech to an audience that included the feminist and radical Emma Goldman, Buhle recounts all the twists and turns this exchange took in the United States up to the recent American vogue of Jacques Lacan. While chronicling the contributions of feminism to the development of psychoanalysis, she also makes an intriguing case for the benefits psychoanalysis brought to feminism. From the first, American psychoanalysis became the property of freewheeling intellectuals and popularists as well as trained analysts. Thus the cultural terrain that Buhle investigates is populated by literary critics, artists and filmmakers, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists--and the resulting psychoanalysis is not so much a strictly therapeutic theory as an immensely popular form of public discourse. She charts the history of feminism from the first wave in the 1910s to the second in the 1960s and into a variety of recent expressions. Where these paths meet, we see how the ideas of Freud and his followers helped further the real-life goals of a feminism that was a widespread social movement and not just an academic phenomenon. The marriage between psychoanalysis and feminism was not pure bliss, however, and Buhle documents the trying moments; most notably the "Momism" of the 1940s and 1950s, a remarkable instance of men blaming their own failures of virility on women. An ambitious and highly engaging history of ideas, Feminism and Its Discontents brings together far-flung intellectual tendencies rarely seen in intimate relation to each other--and shows us a new way of seeing both. Table of Contents: Introduction Feminism, Freudianism, and Female Subjectivity Dissent in Freud's Ranks Culture and Feminine Personality Momism and the Flight from Manhood Ladies in the Dark Feminists versus Freud Feminine Self-in-Relation The Crisis in Patriarchal Authority In the Age of the Vanishing Subject Notes Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: Where some feminists have been hostile to psychoanalysis, and some psychoanalysts have been hostile to feminism, Buhle, a MacArthur Fellow and professor at Brown University, finds them linked in their quest to understand selfhood, gender identity, family structures and sexual expression...Feminism and Its Discontents is an excellent guide to the history of these ideas...The struggles of feminism and psychoanalysis may be cyclical, but they are far from over, and far from dull. --Elaine Showalter, Washington Post Book World Reviews of this book: Buhle's project is to uncover the 'continual conversation' that feminism and psychoanalysis have had with one another, to show how they are mutually constitutive. By charting the exchanges between psychoanalysis and feminism, Feminism and Its Discontents corrects the common impression that feminist criticisms fell on deaf, if not disdainful, ears. Buhle takes pains to detail how feminists and their opponents inside and outside psychoanalysis have set the terms for key debates...Buhle is an animated and engaged storyteller. The story she tells--covering nearly a century of the vicissitudes of psychoanalysis and feminism--is full of twists and turns, well-chosen anecdotes and occasional double-crosses. The cast of characters is inspiring, exasperating, remarkable, mercurial, colorful and sometimes slightly loony. Buhle draws them with sympathy and a keen eye for the evocative detail...Buhle writes with zest, touches of humor and energy. Her style is witty and readable...It is no mean feat to avoid ponderous and technical language when writing about psychoanalysis, but she manages it...All told, psychoanalysis and feminism, sometimes in tandem and sometimes at arm's length, have made vital contributions to the question of female selfhood. The 'odd couple' of our century, they share a large part of the responsibility for our particular form of self-consciousness and for the meaning of individuality in modern society. Mari Jo Buhle deftly illuminates how together they advanced the ambiguous and radical project of modern selfhood. --Jeanne Marecek, Women's Review of Books Reviews of this book: Feminism and Its Discontents sets out to unravel the wondrously complex love-hate relationships between--and within--feminism and psychoanalysis, which it sees as the two most important movements of modernity...The twists and tensions in that relationship highlight the continuous arguments around sexual difference and their entanglement in the messy conflicts in women's lives between motherhood and careers, self-realization and gender justice...Buhle leads her readers through the repeated battles over feminism, Freudianism and female subjectivity with exceptional clarity and care. Her book will...serve as a reliable introduction for those who have scant knowledge of the historical ties binding feminism to psychoanalysis [and] is also useful for those...who wish to remind themselves of what they thought they already knew, but may well have forgotten. --Lynn Segal, Radical Philosophy Reviews of this book: Feminism and Its Discontents adds a novel and welcome twist to [the Freud] conversation, the proposition that feminism was so central to Freud's Americanization that the quest for gender equality can be credited with turning psychoanalysis into what we imagine it always was: an enterprise centered on femininity and female sexuality...[Buhle's] assertions are as enticing as they are controversial...The book [is] as relevant for students of feminist politics as for scholars interested in the history of psychoanalysis itself. --Ellen Herman, Journal of American History Reviews of this book: An exhaustively researched and accessibly written account of the intersections and collisions between [psychoanalysis and feminism]...Buhle chronicles the gyrations of history and assesses how social theory influences culture and vice versa. The result is far-reaching, and she is at her best when reflecting on how the mainstream accommodates and interprets the scholarly. Overall, the text promises a lively overview of the mutual benefits derived from a critical coalition between psychoanaylsis and feminism. Highly recommended for all libraries. --Eleanor J. Bader, Library Journal Reviews of this book: [Buhle] bases her intriguing and expansive historical study on the premise that feminism and psychoanalytic theory, each in its own way concerned with understanding the 'self,' developed in continuous dialogue with each other. The author's captivating, energetic writing style reflects the often spirited, surprisingly tenacious relationship of these two theories--from their emergence as 'unlikely bedpartners of Modernism'; through the shifting intellectual patterns of this century and the insidious mother-blaming of the '50s; to the contemporary postmodern paradigm of subjectivity and selfhood. Combining thorough research and incisive analysis, Buhle examines the ongoing discourse among Freudian, new-Freudian, and feminist theorists throughout the century as well as the endless fascination of popular culture with the questions of biology versus culture, difference versus equality. A vital addition to both women's studies and psychology collections. --Grace Fill, Booklist Reviews of this book: Feminism and Its Discontents covers a dazzling spectrum of thinkers and polemicists, ranging from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Barbara Ehrenreich, with admirable clarity and succinctness. [Buhle's] reach in terms of American [and French] classical, neo-, and post-Freudian writing by men and women on women's psychosexual development is equally impressive...Few scholars would attempt a comprehensive intellectual history on such a charged topic. Buhle has done so in this informative scholarly feat. --Kirkus Reviews Reviews of this book: Buhle has bridged the void between feminism and psychoanalysis with a historian's thorough and penetrating interpretation of theories and thoughts implicit in 20th-century liberation movements. The introduction is clearly developed and carefully documented...Each [chapter] is skillfully organized with extensive references and notes to motivate the astute scholar...There is no question that Buhle has adeptly used a multidisciplinary approach to present ideas and thoughts that give contemporary feminists and post-Freudians another opportunity for dialogue on the terms 'difference' and 'equality.' --G.M. Greenberg, Choice Feminism and psychoanalysis have each been defining moments of this now fading century, and in their tangled relations lie some of its main preoccupations. It takes a historian's eye to unravel this story, and one with the breadth, sympathy, insight, and wit of Mari Jo Buhle to do it justice. Feminism And Its Discontents will undoubtedly stand as the definitive study of the encounter between these two great movements. --Joel Kovel, Bard College, author of Red Hun

NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China—and how it might be prevented. China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve. At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim—it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war. In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap—and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 LIONEL GELBER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES (LONDON)* AMAZON “Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” — President Joe Biden “[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” — Boston Globe “[Full of] wide-ranging, erudite case studies that span human history . . . [A] fine book.”— New York Times Book Review

How does being male or female shape us? And what, aside from obvious anatomical differences, does being male or female mean? In this book, the distinguished psychologist Eleanor Maccoby explores how individuals express their sexual identity at successive periods of their lives. A book about sex in the broadest sense, The Two Sexes seeks to tell us how our development from infancy through adolescence and into adulthood is affected by gender. Chief among Maccoby's contentions is that gender differences appear primarily in group, or social, contexts. In childhood, boys and girls tend to gravitate toward others of their own sex. The Two Sexes examines why this segregation occurs and how boys' groups and girls' groups develop distinct cultures with different agendas. Deploying evidence from her own research and studies by many other scholars, Maccoby identifies a complex combination of biological, cognitive, and social factors that contribute to gender segregation and group differentiation. A major finding of The Two Sexes is that these childhood experiences in same-sex groups profoundly influence how members of the two sexes relate to one another in adulthood--as lovers, coworkers, and parents. Maccoby shows how, in constructing these adult relationships, men and women utilize old elements from their childhood experiences as well as new ones arising from different adult agendas. Finally, she considers social changes in gender roles in light of her discoveries about the constraints and opportunities implicit in the same-sex and cross-sex relationships of childhood.

The Motivation Manifesto is a poetic and powerful call to reclaim your life and find your own personal freedom from Brendon Burchard – the world’s #1 high performance coach and #1 New York Times bestselling author of High Performance Habits. “It’s a triumphant work that transcends the title, lifting the reader from mere motivation into a soaringly purposeful and meaningful life. I love this book." —Paulo Coelho The Motivation Manifesto is a call to claim our personal power. World-renowned high performance trainer Brendon Burchard reveals that the main motive of humankind is the pursuit of greater Personal Freedom. We desire the grand liberties of choice—time freedom, emotional freedom, social freedom, financial freedom, spiritual freedom. Only two enemies stand in our way: an external enemy, defined as the social oppression of who we are by the mediocre masses, and an internal enemy, a sort of self-oppression caused by our own doubt and fear. The march to Personal Freedom, Brendon says, can be won only by declaring our intent and independence, stepping into our personal power, and battling through self-doubt and the distractions of the day until full victory is won. Recalling the revolutionist voices of the past that chose freedom over tyranny, Brendon motivates us to free ourselves from fear and take back our lives once and for all. In this life-changing personal growth book, Brendon presents his nine declarations for personal power and motivation, drawing on insights from his own personal journey and from the lives of some of history's greatest leaders and thinkers. Each chapter focuses on one of the nine declarations, offering practical strategies and exercises to help you apply these principles to your life. Whether you're seeking to overcome self-doubt, boost your confidence, or achieve your goals, The Motivation Manifesto is an invaluable guide to unlocking your full potential. With its inspiring message and actionable advice, this bestselling book is a must-read for anyone who wants to unleash their inner greatness with the power of determination, resilience, and an empowering mindset.

In this book, the author builds on decades of complex research to examine the gender pay gap and the unequal distribution of labor between couples in the home. The author argues that although public and private discourse has brought these concerns to light, the actions taken - such as a single company slapped on the wrist or a few progressive leaders going on paternity leave - are the economic equivalent of tossing a band-aid to someone with cancer. These solutions, the author writes, treat the symptoms and not the disease of gender inequality in the workplace and economy. Here, the author points to data that reveals how the pay gap widens further down the line in women's careers, about 10 to 15 years out, as opposed to those beginning careers after college. She examines five distinct groups of women over the course of the twentieth century: cohorts of women who differ in terms of career, job, marriage, and children, in approximated years of graduation - 1900s, 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s - based on various demographic, labor force, and occupational outcomes. The book argues that our entire economy is trapped in an old way of doing business; work structures have not adapted as more women enter the workforce. Gender equality in pay and equity in home and childcare labor are flip sides of the same issue, and the author frames both in the context of a serious empirical exploration that has not yet been put in a long-run historical context. This book offers a deep look into census data, rich information about individual college graduates over their lifetimes, and various records and sources of material to offer a new model to restructure the home and school systems that contribute to the gender pay gap and the quest for both family and career. --