Women Activism

Alexandra Kollontai was a key leader of the Russian Socialist movement, the only woman in the early Soviet government, and one of the most famous women in Russian history. She worked tirelessly all her life as a speaker, writer, and organizer for women's emancipation. This compelling biography recounts her life for an emerging generation of fighters for women's liberation.

In Kamala’s Way, longtime Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Morain charts how the daughter of two immigrants born in segregated California became one of this country’s most effective power players. He takes listeners through Harris’ years in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, explores her audacious embrace of the little-known Barack Obama, and shows the sharp elbows she deployed to make it to the US Senate. He analyses her failure as a presidential candidate and the behind-the-scenes campaign she waged to land the vice president spot.

Red Valkyries explores the history of socialist feminism in Eastern Europe. Through the revolutionary careers of five prominent socialist women active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the aristocratic Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai; the radical pedagogue Nadezhda Krupskaya; the polyamorous firebrand Inessa Armand; the deadly sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko; and the partisan, scientist, and global women's activist Elena Lagadinova—Kristen Ghodsee tells the story of the personal challenges faced by earlier generations of radicals.

‘Oh my goodness - another girl, Mrs Swain!' Clara's normal iron composure broke, and she screamed, ‘No! That's not the bloody deal!' And that was how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world. When Helen Batten's marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family's past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna's early life. What she unearths is a tale of five feisty redheads struggling to climb out of poverty and find love through two world wars.

On the Line takes listeners inside a bold five-year campaign to bring a union to the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona. Workers here wash hospital, hotel, and restaurant linens and face harsh conditions: routine exposure to biohazardous waste, injuries from surgical tools left in hospital sheets, and burns from overheated machinery. Broken U.S. labor law makes it nearly impossible for them to fight back.

In the 1950s, a young Ngāhuia is fostered by a family who believe in hard work and community. Although close to her kuia, she craves more: she wants higher education and refined living. But whānau dismiss her dreams. To them, she is just a show-off, always getting into trouble, talking back and running away. In this fiery memoir about identity and belonging, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku describes what was possible for a restless working-class girl from the pā.

In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram.

In her compelling and intimate portrait, presidential historian Barbara A. Perry captures Rose Kennedy’s essential contributions to the incomparable Kennedy dynasty. This biography - the first to draw on an invaluable cache of Rose’s newly released diaries and letters - unearths the complexities behind the impeccable persona she showed the world. The woman who emerges is a fascinating character: savvy about her family’s reputation and resilient enough to persevere through the unfathomable tragedies that befell her.

The never-before-published diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard - who spent her teenaged years living out World War II in Windsor Great Park with her close friends Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom - provide an extraordinary and intimate look at the British royal family.

When they married Emperors Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, respectively, Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France became two of the most famous women on the planet. Not only were they both young and beautiful—becoming cultural and fashion icons of their time—but they played a pivotal role in ruling their realms during a tempestuous era characterized by unprecedented political and technological change. Fearless, adventurous, and independent, Elisabeth and Eugénie represented a new kind of empress—one who rebelled against tradition and anticipated and embraced modern values.

Fierce Convictions weaves together world and personal history into a stirring story of life that intersected with Wesley and Whitefield's Great Awakening, the rise and influence of Evangelicalism, and convulsive effects of the French Revolution. A woman of exceptional intellectual gifts and literary talent, Hannah More was above all a person whose faith compelled her both to engage her culture and to transform it.

As an adult, National Public Radio foreign correspondent Jacki Lyden has spent her life on the front lines of some of the world's most dangerous war zones. As a child, she lived in a war zone of a different kind. Her mother, Dolores, suffered from what is now called manic depression. In her manic phases, Dolores became Marie Antoinette or the Queen of Sheba, exotically delusional, yet to young Jacki also transcendent, even inspiring. In time, Jacki grew to accept, even relish, Dolores' bizarre episodes, marveling at her mother's creative energy and using it to fuel her own.

In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Palin paints an intimate portrait of growing up in the wilds of Alaska; meeting her lifelong love; her decision to enter politics; the importance of faith and family; and the unique joys and trials of life as a high-profile working mother. She also opens up for the first time about the 2008 presidential race, providing a rare, mom's-eye view of high-stakes national politics - from patriots dedicated to "Country First" to slick politicos bent on winning at any cost.

Based on groundbreaking original reporting, an extensive new look at Donald Trump's relationships with women, revealing new accusations of sexual misconduct, exploring the roots of his alleged predatory behavior, and illustrating how Trump's presidency has helped catalyze the #MeToo movement and revitalize women's activism.

He aquí el fascinante testimonio de una mujer fuera de lo común: nicaragüense, revolucionaria, poeta, madre de cuatro hijos y esposa de tres maridos. Inquieta por naturaleza, Gioconda Belli revela en estas memorias su rechazo a los convencionalismos y su incansable lucha con la dictadura somocista.

All hail Queen Elizabeth! She's a “queen" but not a monarch who's spent her life fighting to create a more equal society. Now one of the most recognizable women in politics, Warren took a winding road to become the badass senator from Massachusetts - the first woman senator ever elected from the state. Day-to-day struggle to make ends meet? Check. Single motherhood? Check. Law degree? Check. Tenured Harvard Law professor? You bet!

She charmed America with her smart, likable, down-to-earth personality as she campaigned for her husband, then vice-presidential candidate John Edwards. She inspired millions as she valiantly fought advanced breast cancer after being diagnosed only days before the 2004 election. She touched hundreds of similarly grieving families when her own son, Wade, died tragically at age 16 in 1996.

Recalling pivotal moments from her dynamic career on the front lines of American diplomacy and foreign policy, Susan E. Rice - national security advisor to President Barack Obama and US ambassador to the United Nations - reveals her surprising story with unflinching candor in this New York Times best seller.

One was a married American socialite who embarked on a scandalous affair with the future king of England. Another was an aristocratic ingenue whose winsome charm captured the world’s imagination. And the third was a thirty-something actress whose outspokenness put her on a collision course with the British public. The marriages of Wallis Simpson, Diana Spencer, and Meghan Markle into the British royal family sparked a series of crises that at times seemed to threaten the future of the monarchy itself.

While Joe Kennedy was grooming his sons for the White House and the Senate, his Stanford-educated daughter Eunice was tapping her father's fortune and her brothers' political power to engineer one of the great civil rights movements of our time on behalf of millions of children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Now, in Eunice, Pulitzer Prize winner Eileen McNamara finally brings Eunice Kennedy Shriver out from her brothers' shadow.