The Feminine Critique

The Feminine Critique
Biography

Personal History by Katharine Graham. Personal History reads like a good novel: A woman survives a wealthy childhood not without its problems, outlives a marriage that goes disastrously wrong, then takes over the family business and not only makes it a success, but influences American history as well. Best of all, it's true. This large memoir (625 pages) by Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post and undoubtedly one of the most powerful women of her time, is an extraordinary American story. The Truth Is: My Life in Love and Music by Melissa Etheridge. She's not in Kansas anymore! Melissa Etheridge, the gutsy Midwest girl who grew up to be the heartland's gift to rock & roll (and a major gay spokeswoman) tells all in her memoir, The Truth Is.... With a little help from Laura Morton, Etheridge sets the record straight about her life on and off the stage, her coming-out drama, and the stories behind her songs Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. This is the resilient Blunt's chronicle of the hardships, anguish, and stubborn determination of ranch life in wind-scoured Montana. Born in 1954 and raised in a rural area, Blunt became intimate with the ways of cattle, horses, rattlesnakes, fire, and snow as she learned the rules of brute survival at home and a bit of book learning in a one-room schoolhouse until she left home at 13 to attend high school in town.
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic -- a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annexe" of an old office building. Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Jerri Nielsen, Maryanne Vollers (Contributor). Serving as doctor to the Americans "wintering over" at the South Pole in 1999, Jerri Nielsen made headlines when she discovered a lump in her breast that a self-administered biopsy revealed to be an aggressive, fast-growing cancer. No flights in or out of Antarctica are possible during the continent's long winter, and Nielsen's account of giving herself chemotherapy while she and her fellow "Polies" waited for the weather to break is even more gripping than the news reports at the time. Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia by Christopher M. Byron. From housewife to billionaire CEO, Martha Stewart is not just the businesswoman with the Midas touch, she is also a lightning rod for many of the most important and controversial social and economic issues of post-WWII American life. In the unauthorized Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Byron traces Martha’s journey from the troubled world of a working class family in New Jersey to the pinnacle of fame and power as the head of the billion dollar business bearing her name.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever. Still Woman Enough: A Memoir by Loretta Lynn. When asked to write her first memoir, Lynn was in her early 30s: "I hadn't never done nothing with my life except sing and have babies, and I didn't think I had a life to talk about." But Coal Miner's Daughter, the story of the dirt-poor Kentucky girl who married at 14, had four of her six children before she was 21 and went on to become one of country music's most successful recording artists, captured the American imagination. In this follow-up, Lynn mostly focuses on her marriage and the trials and pleasures of Nashville stardom. Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall, Phillip Berman (Contributor). As a young woman, Jane Goodall was best known for her groundbreaking fieldwork with the chimpanzees of Gombe, Africa. Goodall's work has always been controversial, mostly because she broke the mold of research scientist by developing meaningful relationships with her "specimens" and honoring their lives as she would other humans. Reason for Hope is a smoothly written memoir that does not shy away from facing the realities of environmental destruction, animal abuse, and genocide.

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Personal History by Katharine Graham. Personal History reads like a good novel: A woman survives a wealthy childhood not without its problems, outlives a marriage that goes disastrously wrong, then takes over the family business and not only makes it a success, but influences American history as well. Best of all, it's true. This large memoir (625 pages) by Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post and undoubtedly one of the most powerful women of her time, is an extraordinary American story.	The Truth Is: My Life in Love and Music by Melissa Etheridge. She's not in Kansas anymore! Melissa Etheridge, the gutsy Midwest girl who grew up to be the heartland's gift to rock & roll (and a major gay spokeswoman) tells all in her memoir, The Truth Is.... With a little help from Laura Morton, Etheridge sets the record straight about her life on and off the stage, her coming-out drama, and the stories behind her songs	Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. This is the resilient Blunt's chronicle of the hardships, anguish, and stubborn determination of ranch life in wind-scoured Montana. Born in 1954 and raised in a rural area, Blunt became intimate with the ways of cattle, horses, rattlesnakes, fire, and snow as she learned the rules of brute survival at home and a bit of book learning in a one-room schoolhouse until she left home at 13 to attend high school in town.
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic -- a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annexe" of an old office building.	Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Jerri Nielsen, Maryanne Vollers (Contributor). Serving as doctor to the Americans "wintering over" at the South Pole in 1999, Jerri Nielsen made headlines when she discovered a lump in her breast that a self-administered biopsy revealed to be an aggressive, fast-growing cancer. No flights in or out of Antarctica are possible during the continent's long winter, and Nielsen's account of giving herself chemotherapy while she and her fellow "Polies" waited for the weather to break is even more gripping than the news reports at the time.	Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia by Christopher M. Byron. From housewife to billionaire CEO, Martha Stewart is not just the businesswoman with the Midas touch, she is also a lightning rod for many of the most important and controversial social and economic issues of post-WWII American life. In the unauthorized Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Byron traces Martha’s journey from the troubled world of a working class family in New Jersey to the pinnacle of fame and power as the head of the billion dollar business bearing her name.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever.	Still Woman Enough: A Memoir by Loretta Lynn. When asked to write her first memoir, Lynn was in her early 30s: "I hadn't never done nothing with my life except sing and have babies, and I didn't think I had a life to talk about." But Coal Miner's Daughter, the story of the dirt-poor Kentucky girl who married at 14, had four of her six children before she was 21 and went on to become one of country music's most successful recording artists, captured the American imagination. In this follow-up, Lynn mostly focuses on her marriage and the trials and pleasures of Nashville stardom.	Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall, Phillip Berman (Contributor). As a young woman, Jane Goodall was best known for her groundbreaking fieldwork with the chimpanzees of Gombe, Africa. Goodall's work has always been controversial, mostly because she broke the mold of research scientist by developing meaningful relationships with her "specimens" and honoring their lives as she would other humans. Reason for Hope is a smoothly written memoir that does not shy away from facing the realities of environmental destruction, animal abuse, and genocide.