We women like to talk. We talk to the tune of around 20,000 words per day, if current science is to be believed. We talk to commune with our girlfriends, sisters and mothers, we talk to issue directives to our kids and families, we talk to share our feelings (ad nauseum, if you ask our husbands and partners), we talk at work, we talk at play, sometimes we even talk in our sleep. Words are kind of our thing. We should be word experts. So why is it that certain words send us over the edge? The words that take others to their happy place often make us miserable. Words like "vacation," "dinner," and "holidays" can leave us breathing into a paper bag with our head between our knees. But it doesn't have to be that way. Join Mary Fran Bontempo and redefine the "dirty words" that make women cringe. You'll laugh, learn, make some changes and trim your "dirty words" list down to size!

Talk Dirty to Me is a frank, funny, and provocative journey through gender and desire. It ranges from romance and pornography, prostitution and morality, to fantasies and orgasm. Sallie Tisdale guides us through her research of peep shows, sex shops, and even the pornography collection of the British Library. Along with descriptions of her personal experiences, she presents a brilliant, fascinating, and wholly original portrait of contemporary sex and sexual identity. "I wrote Talk Dirty To Me almost twenty years ago. I was in my thirties, and I still found sex bewildering - to be precise, I found my own anxieties and shyness about sex bewildering." - Sallie Tisdale Sallie Tisdale challenges commonly held assumptions about almost everything related to sexuality. Talk Dirty to Me investigates the role of sex in human life: from discussing how gender is now something partly born, partly borrowed, and partly built; to exploring how children are sexualised in fashion, music, and advertising while condemnation of paedophilia reaches fever pitch. "I don't worry much about sex anymore. It just is, there - sometimes forward, sometimes over in a corner. There's mine, and there's yours, and I don't worry too much about yours. Sex is just being human." - Sallie Tisdale Talk Dirty to Me encompasses a wide range of references: American and Japanese pornography, James Joyce's infamous love letters, interviews with prostitutes proud of their skills and earning power, cultural writing from Roland Barthes to Susie Bright, Freud, Adam and Eve, to the findings of sex researchers such as Masters and Johnson. Sallie Tisdale invites her readers to have an open conversation about sex while challenging traditional feminist attitudes towards sexual politics. A personal philosophy of human sexuality - now expanded and revised. Talk Dirty to Me is a frank, funny, and provocative journey through gender and desire. It ranges from romance and pornography, prostitution and morality, to fantasies and orgasm. Sallie Tisdale guides us through her research of peep shows, sex shops, and even the pornography collection of the British Library. Along with descriptions of her personal experiences, she presents a brilliant, fascinating, and wholly original portrait of contemporary sex and sexual identity. Sallie Tisdale challenges commonly held assumptions about almost everything related to sexuality. Talk Dirty to Me investigates the role of sex in human life: from discussing how gender is now something partly born, partly borrowed, and partly built; to exploring how children are sexualised in fashion, music, and advertising while condemnation of paedophilia reaches fever pitch. Talk Dirty to Me encompasses a wide range of references: American and Japanese pornography, James Joyce's infamous love letters, interviews with prostitutes proud of their skills and earning power, cultural writing from Roland Barthes to Susie Bright, Freud, Adam and Eve to the findings of sex researchers such as Masters and Johnson. Sallie Tisdale invites her readers to have an open conversation about sex while challenging traditional feminist attitudes towards sexual politics.

The historical novel has been one of the most important forms of women's reading and writing in the twentieth century, yet it has been consistently under-rated and critically neglected. In the first major study of British women writers' use of the genre, Diana Wallace tracks its development across the century. She combines a comprehensive survey with detailed readings of key writers, including Naomi Mitchison, Georgette Heyer, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Margaret Irwin, Jean Plaidy, Mary Renault, Philippa Gregory and Pat Barker.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could be audaciously ambitious and happy at the same time? You can, and you will. “I’m here to tell you that all of your priorities—personal and ambitious career goals alike—can fit together harmoniously. I’ll show you how, like thousands of women I’ve worked with over the years, you can make more money, earn the credit and recognition you deserve, have more power, and be as ambitious as you want to be. I’ll show you how you can be ambitious without compromising your ethics and integrity. I’ll show you that you can feel worthy and entitled to all of this without fear that you risk sacrificing your desire to have a full, happy personal life and without being afraid that you’ll be less of a woman. It’s worked for me. It’s worked for countless ambitious women I’ve advised. It will work for you.” —From Ambition is Not a Dirty Word: A Woman's Guide to Earning Her Worth and Achieving Her Dreams We women aren’t advancing in our careers the way we should. We’re not making the money we deserve or getting the fulfillment we desire. And this time it’s not men who are holding us back. This time we’re doing it to ourselves, because ambition—for us—is still a dirty word. Debra Condren has coached thousands of women at every level—from those just starting out to the most powerful female executives in the United States—and each one possesses the same fear: if she goes after her dream, she’ll be seen as selfish, bitchy, a bad wife, or bad mother. But it’s exactly this fear of ambition that has forced women to leave the best part of themselves—their dreams, their great talents—by the roadside, rendering them less able to be the whole people they should be in every area of their lives. Condren has a new message and mission: to remind women that ambition is a virtue, not a vice. Ambition is the best of who we are. The real way to have a great life is to see ambition as a part of your value system to which you must give equal attention, along with the other priorities you hold dear, including your spouse, your children, and your friends. In Ambition is Not a Dirty Word, Dr. Condren offers fresh, powerful tools for reclaiming your dreams. Her eight Ambitious Rules provide concrete, innovative solutions to the everyday struggles we as women face, like taking credit, deflecting detractors, and handling confrontation, so that you can become more powerful and fulfilled at work and more satisfied at home. You can redefine your ambition in the face of social sanctions and unapologetically go after your dreams without sacrificing the rest of your life. You owe it to yourself and the world to make the contribution you were born to make. Debra Condren will show you how to do it.

Entry includes attestations of the head word's or phrase's usage, usually in the form of a quotation. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).