"Engaging and inspiring . . . Reading this book should make you want to vote." Barack Obama In a world of sound bites, deliberate misinformation, and a political scene colored by the blue versus red partisan divide, how does the average educated American find a reliable source that's free of political spin? What You Should Know About Politics . . . But Don't breaks it all down, issue by issue, explaining who stands for what, and why-whether it's the economy, income inequality, Obamacare, foreign policy, education, immigration, or climate change. If you're a Democrat, a Republican, or somewhere in between, it's the perfect book to brush up on a single topic or read through to get a deeper understanding of the often mucky world of American politics. This is an essential volume for understanding the background to the 2016 presidential election. But it is also a book that transcends the season. It's truly for anyone who wants to know more about the perennial issues that will continue to affect our everyday lives. The third edition includes an introduction by Naomi Wolf discussing the themes and issues that have come to the fore during the present presidential cycle.

The bestselling author of The Beauty Myth, Vagina and The End of America chronicles the struggles and eventual triumph of John Addington Symonds, a Victorian-era poet, biographer, and critic who penned what became a foundational text on our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ legal rights. In Outrages, Naomi Wolf chronicles the struggles and eventual triumph of John Addington Symonds, a Victorian-era poet, biographer, and critic who penned what became a foundational text on our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ legal rights, despite writing at a time when anything interpreted as homoerotic could be used as evidence in trials leading to harsh sentences under British law. Wolf's book is extremely relevant today for what it has to say about the vital importance of freedom of speech and the courageous roles of publishers and booksellers in an era of growing calls for censorship and ever-escalating state violations of privacy. At a time when the American Library Association, the Guardian, and other observers document national and global efforts from censoring LGBTQ+ voices in libraries to using anti-trans and homophobic sentiments cynically to win elections, the story of how such hateful efforts evolved from the past, to reach down to us now, is more important than ever. Drawing on the work of a range of scholars of censorship and of LGBTQ+ legal history, Wolf depicts how state censorship, and state prosecution of same-sex sexuality, played out-decades before the infamous trial of Oscar Wilde-shadowing the lives of people who risked in ever-changing, targeted ways scrutiny by the criminal justice system. She shows how legal persecutions of writers, and of men who loved men affected Symonds and his contemporaries, all the while, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was illicitly crossing the Atlantic and finding its way into the hands of readers who reveled in the American poet's celebration of freedom, democracy, and unfettered love. Inspired by Whitman, Symonds kept trying, stubbornly, to find a way to express his message-that love and sex between men were not 'morbid' and deviant, but natural and even ennobling. He wrote a strikingly honest secret memoir written in code to embed hidden messages-which he embargoed for a generation after his death - and wrote the essay A Problem in Modern Ethics that was secretly shared in his lifetime and is now rightfully understood as one of the first gay rights manifestos in the English language. Equal parts insightful historical critique and page-turning literary detective story, Wolf's Outrages is above all an uplifting testament to the triumph of romantic love.

The bestselling classic that redefined our view od the relationship between beauty and female identity.

In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."

An astonishing new work that radically changes how we think about, talk about and understand the vagina - and consequently how we think about women and sexuality - from Naomi Wolf, one of our most respected cultural critics and author of the modern classic, The Beauty Myth. Vagina: A New Biography combines cutting-edge science with cultural history to explore the role of female desire and how it affects female identity, creativity and confidence. Provocative and engaging, positive and inspiring, this book brings to light female impulses, history and dreams - and, in exploring what women really need - it goes to the very core of what it means to be female. For any woman who wants to understand her body and her mind and the culture that defines her - Vagina is essential reading.

In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century's worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile. The book cuts across political parties and ideologies and speaks directly to those among us who are concerned about the ever-tightening noose being placed around our liberties. In this timely call to arms, Naomi Wolf compels us to face the way our free America is under assault. She warns us-with the straight-to-fellow-citizens urgency of one of Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlets-that we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom. "Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty," states Wolf. Wolf is taking her message directly to the American people in the most accessible form and as part of a large national campaign to reach out to ordinary Americans about the dangers we face today. This includes a lecture and speaking tour, and being part of the nascent American Freedom Campaign, a grassroots effort to ensure that presidential candidates pledge to uphold the constitution and protect our liberties from further erosion. The End of America will shock, enrage, and motivate-spurring us to act, as the Founders would have counted on us to do in a time such as this, as rebels and patriots-to save our liberty and defend our nation.

As the practice of democracy becomes a lost art, Americans are increasingly desperate for a restored nation. Many have a general sense that the "system" is in disorder -- if not on the road to functional collapse. But though it is easy to identify our political problems, the solutions are not always as clear. In "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries," bestselling author Naomi Wolf illustrates the breathtaking changes that can take place when ordinary citizens engage in the democratic system the way the founders intended and tells how to use that system, right now, to change your life, your community, and ultimately, the nation.

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma - how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this shortened edition you will find the essence of Wolf's groundbreaking book. It is a radical, gripping and frank expose of the tyranny of the beauty myth, its oppressive function and the destructive obsession it engenders.

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity . Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma - how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this iconic, gripping and frank expose, Naomi Wolf exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today, in the home and at work, in literature and the media, in relationships between men and women, between women and women. With pertinent and intelligent examples, she confronts the beauty industry and its advertising and uncovers the reasons why women are consumed by this destructive obsession. 'Essential reading' Guardian 'A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it' Gloria Steinem

In The Beauty Myth the fearless Naomi Wolf revolutionized the way we think about beauty. In Misconceptions, she demythologizes motherhood and reveals the dangers of common assumptions about childbirth. With uncompromising honesty she describes how hormones eroded her sense of independence, ultrasounds tested her commitment to abortion rights, and the keepers of the OB/GYN establishment lacked compassion. The weeks after her first daughter’s birth taught her how society, employers, and even husbands can manipulate new mothers. She had bewildering post partum depression, but learned that a surprisingly high.percentage of women experience it.
Wolf’s courageous willingness to talk about the unexpected difficulties of childbirth will help every woman become a more knowledgeable planner of her pregnancy and better prepare her for the challenges of balancing a career, freedom, and a growing family. Invaluable in its advice to parents, Misconceptions speaks to anyone connected–personally, medically, or professionally–to a new mother.

The bestselling author of The Beauty Myth, Vagina and The End of America chronicles the struggles and eventual triumph of John Addington Symonds, a Victorian-era poet, biographer, and critic who penned what became a foundational text on our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ legal rights. In Outrages, Naomi Wolf chronicles the struggles and eventual triumph of John Addington Symonds, a Victorian-era poet, biographer, and critic who penned what became a foundational text on our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ legal rights, despite writing at a time when anything interpreted as homoerotic could be used as evidence in trials leading to harsh sentences under British law. Wolf's book is extremely relevant today for what it has to say about the vital importance of freedom of speech and the courageous roles of publishers and booksellers in an era of growing calls for censorship and ever-escalating state violations of privacy. At a time when the American Library Association, the Guardian, and other observers document national and global efforts from censoring LGBTQ+ voices in libraries to using anti-trans and homophobic sentiments cynically to win elections, the story of how such hateful efforts evolved from the past, to reach down to us now, is more important than ever. Drawing on the work of a range of scholars of censorship and of LGBTQ+ legal history, Wolf depicts how state censorship, and state prosecution of same-sex sexuality, played out-decades before the infamous trial of Oscar Wilde-shadowing the lives of people who risked in ever-changing, targeted ways scrutiny by the criminal justice system. She shows how legal persecutions of writers, and of men who loved men affected Symonds and his contemporaries, all the while, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was illicitly crossing the Atlantic and finding its way into the hands of readers who reveled in the American poet's celebration of freedom, democracy, and unfettered love. Inspired by Whitman, Symonds kept trying, stubbornly, to find a way to express his message-that love and sex between men were not 'morbid' and deviant, but natural and even ennobling. He wrote a strikingly honest secret memoir written in code to embed hidden messages-which he embargoed for a generation after his death - and wrote the essay A Problem in Modern Ethics that was secretly shared in his lifetime and is now rightfully understood as one of the first gay rights manifestos in the English language. Equal parts insightful historical critique and page-turning literary detective story, Wolf's Outrages is above all an uplifting testament to the triumph of romantic love.

Many female journalists came to the fore during the first and second world wars, and their perspective was very different to that of their male peers, who were reporting from the field. Specifically, they often wrote about war from the perspective of those left at home, struggling to keep the household afloat. And with How it feels to be forcibly fed (1914) by Djuna Barnes, one of the world's very first experiential, or 'gonzo' journalists, came a new age of reporting. Since then, women have continued to break new ground in newspapers and magazines, redefining the world as we see it. Many of the pieces here feel almost unsettlingly relevant today -- the conclusions Emma 'Red' Goldman drew in her 1916 The social aspects of birth control, Maddy Vegtel's 1930s article about becoming pregnant at 40. Eleanor Roosevelt's call for greater tolerance after America's race riots in 1943. new generation; Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones caused a media revolution; Ruth Picardie's unflinchingly honest column about living with cancer in 1997 brought a wave of British candour and a host of imitators; and when two iconic women come face to face we have at one end Dorothy Parker on Isadora Duncan (1928) and at the other Julie Burchill on Margaret Thatcher (2004). This collection of superlative writing, selected by the Sunday Times's most senior female editor, brings together the most influential, incisive, controversial, affecting and entertaining pieces of journalism by the best women in the business.

Leonard Wolf, a retired professor now in his early eighties, is the kind of person who likes to use a medieval astrolabe, dress in Basque shepherd's clothing, and convince otherwise sensible people to quit their jobs and follow their passions. Leonard believes that inside everyone is an artist, and that happiness in life depends on valuing and acting upon one's creative impulse. In "The Treehouse," her most personal book yet, Naomi Wolf outlines her father's lessons in creating lasting success and happiness, and offers inspiration for the artist in all of us.

Drawn from Leonard's lecture notes, the chapters of "The Treehouse" remind us to "Be Still and Listen," "Use Your Imagination," and "Do Nothing Without Passion," and that "Your Only Wage Will Be Joy" and "Mistakes Are Part of the Draft." This is

a journey of self-discovery in which the creative endeavor is paramount.

"The Treehouse" is a stirring personal history, a meditation on fathers and daughters, an argument for honoring the creative impulse, and a unique instruction in the art of personal happiness.

An astonishing work of cutting-edge science and cultural history from one of our most respected cultural critics and thinkers, Naomi Wolf, author of the modern classic The Beauty Myth

When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf on a journey to tease out the intersections between sexuality and creativity, she discovers--much to her own astonishment--an increasing body of scientific evidence that documents new insights about female sexual response. These breakthrough discoveries show that the vagina, clitoris, and labia--the female sexual centers--are not "merely flesh," but directly affect the female brain, and that the female brain directly affects, in newly documented ways, the vagina and female sexual centers. The vagina thus has a fundamental relationship to female consciousness itself. Utterly enthralling and totally fascinating, Vagina draws on this set of insights about "the mind-vagina connection" to reveal new information about what women really need, on many different levels, and considers what sexual relationships--and a woman's relationship to her self, as well as to her own desire and pleasure--transformed by these insights, may look like.

A brilliant and nuanced synthesis of physiology, history, and cultural criticism, Vagina explores the physical, political, and spiritual implications for women--and for society as a whole--in this startling series of new scientific breakthroughs from a writer whose conviction and keen intelligence have propelled her works to the tops of bestseller lists, and firmly into the realm of modern classics.

In the struggle for women's equality, there is one subject still shrouded in silence - women's compulsive pursuit of beauty. The myth of female beauty challenges every woman, every day of her life. The author exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today.

Since their emergence as a journalistic force after the world wars, women have continued to break new ground in newspapers and magazines, redefining the world as we see it as well as the craft as it applied. Many of the pieces in "Journalistas feel almost unsettlingly relevant today -- the conclusions Emma "Red" Goldman drew in her 1916, "the Social Aspects of Birth Control," Maddy Vegtel's 1930s article about becoming pregnant at forty, and Eleanor Roosevelt's call for greater tolerance after America's race riots in 1943. Many have pushed other limits: Naomi Wolf's "Beauty Myth brought feminism to a new generation; Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones caused a media revolution: Ruth Picardie's unflinchingly honest column about living with cancer in 1997 brought a wave of British candor and a host of imitators; and when two iconic women come face to face, we have at one end, Dorothy Parker on Isadora Duncan (1928), and at the other, Julie Burchill on Margaret Thatcher (2004).

In this dynamic new book Naomi Wolf explores and celebrates the phenomenon of female sexuality - empirically, imaginatively, anatomically and personally. By following a group of four contemporary girls - including her younger self as they come of age in the seventies, Wolf shows how our culture tries to shape and confine women's desire. Embarking on a voyage of discovery, she illustrates how flawed and prescribed are the notions of what women want, and how these change through the ages - from Taoist techniques for giving women pleasure, to Victorian repression, and the so-called liberated nineties. Drawing on scholarly texts, secret diaries, real life and fantasy, she demonstrates that female sexuality is wilder, more demanding and more powerful than our culture dares to accept.