From Eve To Dawn The Masculine Mystique

“Filled with fascinating detail . . . this second volume of French’s massive and valuable work is an example of scholarship and clear vision.” —Publishers Weekly This volume of New York Times–bestselling author Marilyn French’s monumental history analyzes and evaluates the lives of women in societies around the world between feudal times and the French Revolution. Drawing upon fifteen years of collaboration with a team of researchers and prominent historians, the volume opens with fascinating chapters comparing medieval Europe and Japan, disparate cultures which nevertheless shared traditions of male dominated aggression and competitiveness. French then shows how, in Europe, this tradition led to colonialism and imperialism, and the horrific subjugation of indigenous societies, just as women were subjugated in the conquerors’ home countries. As French makes clear in this impassioned women’s history, only with the French Revolution did the political force women exerted powerfully change the course of history. “French gives us grand theory at its best, wading through copious amounts of scholarly data on the histories of civilizations and offering up, in readable prose, an important synthesis.” —Library Journal

Offers a three-volume examination of the history of women.

The first volume of the New York Times–bestselling author’s monumental and unprecedented history: “Consistently thought-provoking” (The New York Review of Books). The internationally celebrated author of The Women’s Room, Marilyn French spent over fifteen years with a team of researchers and prominent historians examining women’s lives and activities in civilizations and societies spanning the ages. Beginning in prehistory, Origins moves on to examine women’s lives in ancient Egypt, China, India, Peru, Mexico, Greece, and Rome. In her reconstruction of wars, laws, and other activities affecting both women and men, French also traces the worldviews underpinning them. She also depicts how women’s relationship to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam changed for good and bad over the centuries. “She backs up even her more controversial theories with an impressive accumulation of academically accepted historical, anthropological and sociological sources . . . Written in concise, understated language, this is a significant addition to literature on women’s studies and history.” —Publishers Weekly

From the New York Times–bestselling author: “A rare find: a page-turning, can’t-put-it-down history text.” —Library Journal Writing about what she calls the “most cheering period in female history,” Marilyn French recounts how nineteenth-century women living under imperialism, industrialization, and capitalism nonetheless organized for their own education, a more equitable wage, and the vote. Focusing on the United States, Great Britain, and countries in Africa, French argues that capitalism’s success depended on the exploitation and enslavement of huge numbers, including women, but the act of working outside the home alongside other women, rather than in isolation, provided women with the possibility of organizing for emancipation. “The third volume of her remarkable four-volume survey . . . fascinating insight and detail.” —Publishers Weekly

The conclusion of the “remarkable” four-volume history by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Women’s Room (Publishers Weekly). In the twentieth century, women became a force for change, in part through suffrage, and in part through mass organizing. This final volume of Marilyn French’s wide-ranging survey offers a vibrant history of multiple political revolutions as well as the century’s horrors—including genocides and the atom bomb. It ends with a thoughtful investigation into the various indigenous feminist movements throughout the world and asks what these peaceful revolutions might augur for the future. Eschewing easy answers, French suggests that the defining moral moments of the twenty-first century should, and will, build from a global human rights agenda.

The year is 1970: The Supreme Court has legalized abortion, Equal Pay for Equal Work is now the law, and Affirmative Action programs attempt to redress past injustices and inequities. Women are coming together nationwide in consciousness-raising groups, sharing their knowledge and experiences with each other. A group of six women in Stentoria, California bond through such a group, and support each other as women in this new Movement are forming collectives; publishing their own books and periodicals; creating an exciting new genre of Womens Music; as well as starting their own bookstores, to make these new materials readily available to the community. New spiritual movementsfocused on the Divine Feminine principleare also beginning. Even some men are sympathetic and supportive of these ideals. But as the 1980s arrive, the situation changes: the backlash against the womens movement in politics and the media seemingly turns into a full-fledged war, specifically targeting the gains that women have achieved. Opposition from traditional religions hardens, and womens reproductive rights come under renewed attack; the Equal Rights Amendment fails, even as women themselves debate controversial questions: such as banning pornography, and how to view a rising Third Wave of the womens movement. Ominously, the threat of AIDS seemingly brings the era of sexual freedom to a close. The six women deal with all these issues, as well as personal challengesincluding balancing work and family responsibilities. As the new century begins, they reflect about what the womens movement ultimately accomplished. In a world now characterized by growing economic inequality, increasing low self-esteem for some women (exemplified by cosmetic surgery and extreme makeovers), legalized same-sex marriage, and media attention to Transgender issues, this book may help you to appreciate not only how far weve come, but how far we have yet to go.

Anne Wilson Schaef builds on her former bestseller, Women’s Reality, her New York Times bestseller When Society Becomes an Addict, and her multi-million copy bestseller Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much to bring us all up to date on the Women’s Movement. She explores the potentially positive impact that women can and must harness to step forward for further development of the human race and for the planet as a whole. She explores the history of the waves of the Women’s Movement and the personal, interpersonal, and cultural stoppers that have kept women from reaching their full potential. She demonstrates how women’s special talents and assets are essential for dealing with the symptoms of what has become a dysfunctional society. This book not only offers hope and opportunity for women to step up and shape a society with their unique gifts, it offers hope for the planet itself.