Shortlist of Recommended Self-Help Books |
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| The Guide to Self-Help Books |
Women’s Issues |
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Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women Susan Faludi In this aggressive work, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis; first, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than antifeminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. Meticulously researched, the book won the 1991 National Book Critics Circle award for general non-fiction. 1991, Crown |
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Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself Judith Duerk Circle of Stones draws the reader into a meditative experience of the lost Feminine and creates a space to consider our present lives from the eyes of women’s ancient culture and ritual. The reader is led into a personal journey reflecting upon the question, “how might my life have been different if . . . ?” 1999, Innisfree Press |
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Composing a Life: Life as a Work in Progress Mary Catherine Bateson Bateson shows us that life itself is a creative process using the personal stories of five extraordinary women as her framework. She sees child rearing, career changes, relocations, and divorce as creative opportunities rather than a series of interruptions. She looks at life as a work of improvisational art. 2001, Grove Press This book was a Self-Help Book Pick of the Month! Read David's full Book Review. |
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The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships Harriet Lerner Dr. Lerner writes, “anger is a signal and one worth listening to.” This renowned classic has transformed the lives of millions of readers. The book teaches women to identify the true sources of their anger and to use anger as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change. 1997, Harper and Row |
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Deborah, Golda and Me Letty Cottin Pogrebin This is a well-written, vigorous, and challenging look at Jewish traditions and values from the world-view of a leading feminist thinker. In this book, Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. Magazine, reconciles her Jewish background which she rejected for almost 20 years with her feminist ideology. When Pogrebin’s mother died, she was not allowed by the patriarchal structure to recite the Kaddish, a prayer for the dead. She learns in time to embrace both feminism and a reexamined Judaism. 1992, Anchor |
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Femalia Joani Blank This shockingly beautiful book is a collection of photographs of women’s genitals. The importance and beauty of this book is its willingness to portray women’s genitals in an honest, non-sexualized way. The excellently photographed images are in full color and close up. No other aspect of the woman is pictured nor are they identified in any way. The book is a wonderful tribute to the unique individuality and beauty of all women. 1993, Down There Press |
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The Heart and Soul of Sex: Making the ISIS Connection Gina Ogden Based on a landmark sex survey, researcher and sex therapist Ogden found "the language of spiritual experience comes closest to expressing the fullness of our sexual response, for it is the language of connection and ecstasy." The book guides the reader on a path to her sexual "center" where healing, ecstasy and transformation occur. 2006, Trumpeter This book was a Self-Help Book Pick of the Month! Read David's full Book Review. |
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Heart of a Woman Maya Angelou An Oprah Book Club selection, this is the fourth in a series of autobiographical memoirs poet Maya Angelou has produced. This book is filled with unforgettable vignettes of people from Billie Holiday to Malcom X, but perhaps most important is the story of her relationship with her son. 1997, Bantam |
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I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship In Women’s Lives
Ellen Goodman and Patricia O’Brien A friendship is a lot like romance – in the beginning all chemistry and luck, but then come commitment and dependability and other challenges, and as any old friends know, it keeps getting better if you hold on through the bends and curves. The authors share their own story of twenty-five years of friendship and the stories of other women. 2001, Simon and Schuster |
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Lost Fathers: How Women Can Heal from Adolescent Father Loss Laraine Herring Every year an estimated one million teen girls in the United States experience the death of their fathers. Countless more lose their fathers to divorce, addiction, incarceration or abandonment. This authoritative guide for adult women helps you to understand how your behaviors and relationships may be shaped by losing your father at such an important time of your life. With gentle expertise, Herring blends personal stories, up-to-date psychological information and interactive exercises for readers in this healing guide. 2005, Hazelden |
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Lot’s Daughters Robert M. Polhemus In this provocative volume, Polhemus, chair of Stanford's English Department, uses the "disreputible Bible story of father-daughter incest" as a lens to understand family and gender relations through the centuries. He casts a wide net over literature, art, psychology, show-busines, and politics to argue that the power dynamic between younger women and older men "in which daughters fall in love with their father's lives and older men are tempted by the intoxicating power and promise of youth" - is integral to our society. 2005, Stanford University Press |
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Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul Patricia Foster, ed. Well-known writers contribute vivid portraits in which they explore their relationships to their bodies. They describe dealing with cancer and chemotherapy, pregnancy and infertility, anorexia, aging, multiple sclerosis, diets and plastic surgery. The book is an inspiring testimony to the female spirit and offers examples of women who lead lives that demonstrate the connection between the love for one’s body as it is and the love one feels for the earth. 1995, Anchor |
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The Mismeasure of Women: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex Carol Tavris When “man is the measure of all things,” woman is forever trying to measure up. In this enlightening book, social psychologist Tavris unmasks the widespread but invisible custom – pervasive in the social sciences, medicine, law, and history – of treating men as the normal standard, women as abnormal. Tavris illuminates the similarities between women and men and shows that the real differences lie not in gender, but in power, resources, and life experiences. 1993, Touchstone |
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Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss Hope Edelman This book explores the profound pain of mother loss among women. As Edelman shares her own painful story and the stories of other women who lost their mothers, she describes the secondary effects that may occur, including the girl filling the lost mother’s role at home for father and younger siblings. 1995, Delta |
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My Mother/My Self: The Daughter’s Search for Identity Nancy Friday This best-selling book is based on hundreds of interviews with women and focuses on the complex relationship between mothers and daughters throughout a daughter’s life. This relationship is complicated by society’s denial of women’s sexuality and is an enlightening resource for women coming to terms with their identity as adult daughters and mothers. 1997, Delta |
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Our Bodies Ourselves for the New Century Boston Women’s Health Book Collective This major update of the book that helped launch the women’s health movement adds new chapters on online health resources, AIDS and managed care. This empowering book remains true to the spirit of the original edition which was to give women tools to enable them to take charge of their health and their lives. 1998, Touchstone |
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The Perimenopause & Menopause Workbook: A Comprehensive, Personalized Guide to Hormone Health Kathryn R. Simpson, Dale E. Bredesen Using extensive and interactive checklists, symptom lists, and self-assessments, this book first helps you to track your symptoms. Then it takes you through all the medical and non-medical treatments available, including human-identical hormones, lifestyle and dietary changes, supplements, and other non-HRT treatments. 2006, New Harbinger |
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A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety and Radical Transformation Stephanie Brown Why is it that newfound sobriety with its hard-won joys and accomplishments can be such a lonely and unsatisfying experience for many women? Once a woman leaves behind the numbing comforts of alcohol or other drugs, she is left to face herself - perhaps for the first time in her life. With gentle guidance and personal stories, Dr. Brown helps readers unravel painful truths and confusing feelings and weave for themselves a true sense of self. This book offers women a map to find their way through the rocky spots in sobriety. 2004, Hazelden |
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Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
Mary Pipher At adolescence, says Mary Pipher, “girls become ‘female impersonators’ who fit their whole selves into small crowded spaces.” Many lose spark, interest, and even IQ points as a “girl poisoning” society forces a choice between being shunned or staying true to oneself and struggling to stay within a narrow definition of female. She offers prescriptions for changing society and compassionate strategies with which to revive adolescent girls’ lost sense of self. 1995, Ballantine Books |
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The Seasons of a Woman’s Life Daniel J. Levinson and Judy D. Levinson This book focuses on women’s psychosocial growth from the late teens to middle age and is based on interviews with homemakers, career women, and academics. The book is a rich source of insights and consolation and speaks with directness to the dreams, emotional crises, inexplicable feelings, social conflicts, and psychological upheavals that mark each woman’s life course. 1997, Ballantine Books |
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The Second Shift Arlie Hochschild Sociologist Hochschild talks openly about what really happens in dual career households: women still do the majority of childcare and housework even though they also work outside the home. This book can be useful to married couples by stimulating frank discussion of how household roles are divided. 2003, Penguin Books |
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We Are Our Mother’s Daughters Cokie Roberts Renowned news correspondent Cokie Roberts tells her own story and those of women of her generation. Having graduated from Wellesley in 1964, Roberts explains that the women of her generation were pioneers in many ways – especially when it came to career and workplace issues: “we were the first women at almost everything we did, and most of us often had the experience of being the only woman in the room.” Many of the essays are political in nature, covering the Civil Rights Act, consumer advocacy, and the history of women in the military. She ends with a message of encouragement for young women – that we need only look as far as our foremothers for inspiration. 2000, Perennial |
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Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom Christiane Northrup Dr. Northrup is a gynecologist who also acknowledges the usefulness of natural therapies and herbs. In Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, she covers the treatment of many physical concerns, among them PMS, menstrual cramps, breast cancer, fibroids, endometriosis, and many others – explaining how many of these physical problems have roots in emotional upsets. Her medical approach is decidedly feminist, blaming our “addictive” and patriarchal society for many of the health problems plaguing women. She focuses on the whole of a woman’s life to understand health problems in context. More than 1.25 million copies in print. 2002, Bantam |
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Women's Sexuality across the Life Span: Challenging Myths, Creating Meanings Judith C. Daniluk This important book investigates how women come by, and live out, their sexual sense of themselves from childhood to old age. It offers useful suggestions for developing skills for sexual self-definition at every age and stage of development. Exercises include letter-writing and drawing to confront feelings, psycho-drama and body sculpting to exorcise demons, guided fantasy to activate disowned body parts, and self-affirmations to help women re-occupy their bodies. 2003, The Guilford Press |
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Women Who Run With the Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estes Estes, a Jungian analyst, draws on folklore, fairy tales and dream symbols to help restore women’s neglected, intuitive and instinctive abilities. She describes the Wild Woman archetype, a female in touch with her primitive side and able to rely on gut feelings to make choices. An inspiring, compelling, moving and unusual book. 1996, Ballentine Books |
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