I've looked high and low for a good textbook to use for the class I will teach on "Women & Politics" in the fall at Samford University. I was thrilled when I came across this book at a book fair. Many of my students are quite conservative, and anything titled "feminist" is likely to scare them. I have found that the best way to get such students to start questioning some of their ingrained gender role stereotypes is to slap them upside the proverbial head with statistics on women in U.S. society. This book is chock full of powerful statistics that tell no lies about what it means to be a woman in U.S. society, and also how one's racial identity affects one's experience of womanhood. I plan to assign the statistics (which are in a separate section of the book)for the first week of class. Then the students will have to interpret the statistics themselves. Why is it that there are so few women leaders in academia, in the military, in the corporate world? Why is it that there are more girls than boys entering college now? Why do women earn less than men do? These questions will then be the starting point from which we can explore theory. In sum, other professors out there -- this is a perfect book to assign for college students with no prior exposure to women's studies.

Dramatically narrated by Jean Stapleton, Eleanor: Her Secret Journey is a superb, eighty-minute monologue drawn by Rhoda Lerman from Eleanor Roosevelt's writings. We are introduced to a woman who justifiably became known as the "First Lady of the World" and perfectly captures the duality of a complex personality both in her public activities and her private life. Eleanor: Her Secret Journey is a wonderful addition to any school or community library audiobook collection, and a "must" for those with an admiration for one of the most influential American women of the 20th Century.

This is a CD of straight Aesop's fables followed by the narrator trying to turn the moral into common language. Aesop's read better than they listen - at least for me. My kids really didn't like it because the stories are short (only about 1 minute) and the "real life applications" didn't make sense to them or me. Overall, I wouldn't recommend it unless you just want somebody to read the stories to you.