Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics
Jennifer Baumgartner

Publisher's Weekly Review
This cultural study pries open that ambiguous can of worms called "sexual choice" and looks at it with eyes wide open. Baumgardner, coauthor of the "third wave feminist" Manifesta, discovered her own bisexuality shortly after graduating from college, when she unexpectedly fell in love with a "girlie girl" co-worker at Ms. magazine, which was, significantly, the first place she "truly saw women without men as being successes, not failures." Her story of how she explored her "urge toward bisexuality as a means to figuring out how to have a satisfying, truly equal and truly intimate relationship" weaves a personal thread through the book. In between, she evokes the heady days of second-wave feminism, lauds Ani DiFranco as the quintessential bisexual of her generation and analyzes the TV heroine Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a powerful, vulnerable, tragic, feminist superhero. Baumgardner controversially argues that bisexuality, especially in younger women, is more widespread than we think, and that recognizing this "could harness the multiplicity of attraction that Kinsey described" and "lead to better relationships, both political and sexual, between men and women." Her insistence that bisexuality has the potential to further the goals of feminism and gay rights challenges the limitations of "gay" and "straight."
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Sunday List of Dreams
Kris Radish

Publisher's Comments
Kris Radish has captivated readers coast-to-coast with novels featuring ordinary women who dare to make their most extraordinary dreams come true. In The Sunday List of Dreams, she takes us on an enticing adventure with Connie Nixon, a fiftysomething firecracker who discovers it’s never too late to start living passionately.

For as long as Connie can remember, she has made time each Sunday to rewrite a list of her goals and wishes. She could never have predicted the sparks that would fly when she finally decided to tackle one of the less glamorous items on the list–getting rid of the junk piled up in her garage. After all the years she spent raising three daughters and struggling with a painful marriage, the boxes represent a history she can barely stand to face. But buried in this rubble is a revelation that will reunite Connie with Jessica, her estranged daughter who moved to New York City. It turns out that Jessica is a highly successful businesswoman–in the sex-toy industry. When Connie visits her daughter’s secret world unannounced, both women begin to confront a myriad of truths about themselves and their memories of the past. The result is an exhilarating adventure, by turns hilarious and inspiring, that helps Connie create a whole new list of dreams–while finally giving herself permission to make them all come true.

The Seventeen Traditions
Ralph Nader

Publisher's Comments
"My boyhood in a small town in Connecticut was shaped by my family, my friends, our neighbors, my chores and hobbies, the town's culture and environment, its schools, libraries, factories, and businesses, their workers, and by storms that came from nowhere to disrupt everything. . . . Yet childhood in any family is a mysterious experience. . . . What shapes the mind, the personality, the character?"

So begins this unexpected and extraordinary book by Ralph Nader. Known for his lifetime of selfless activism, Nader now looks back to the earliest days of his own life, to his serene and enriching childhood in bucolic Winsted, Connecticut. From listening to learning, from patriotism to argument, from work to simple enjoyment, Nader revisits seventeen key traditions he absorbed from his parents, his siblings, and the people in his community, and draws from them inspiring lessons for today's society. Warmly human, rich with sensory memories and lasting wisdom, it offers a kind of modern-day parable of how we grow from children into responsible adults—a reminder of a time when nature and community were central to the way we all learned and lived.

About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope
Edited by Jessica Berge Gross

Publisher's Comments
In this intimate anthology, twenty writers explore the grief and sadness - and hope - that living through a miscarriage can bring.

Featuring such notable writers as Pam Houston, Joyce Maynard, Caroline Leavitt, Susanna Sonnenberg, and Julianna Baggott, among many others, About What Was Lost is the only book that uses honest, eloquent, and deeply moving narrative to provide much-needed solace and support on the subject of pregnancy loss.

Today, as many as one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. And yet, many women are surprised to find that instead of simply grieving the end of a pregnancy, they feel as if they are mourning the loss of a child. Taken aback by their sorrow, they seek solace in similar perspectives, only to find that a silence and lingering stigma surrounds the topic. Revealing a wide spectrum of experiences and perspectives, this powerful collection offers comfort and community for the millions of women (and their loved ones) who experience this all-too-common kind of loss every year.

Virgin: The Untouched History
Hanne Blank

Publisher's Comments
Virgin: The Untouched History is the first-ever history of virginity in Western culture from the Greeks to the present day. What do astrology, the French Revolution, leeches, Queen Victoria's wedding dress, body-snatching, Fanny Hill, gynecological speculums, Aristotle, bicycle riding, and a sex toy called the Lotus Blossum Pocket Pal all have in common? They are among the thousands of people and things--many of which you never imagined--that play a part in the history of virginity.