Finances:

The 10 Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make Before 40
by Tina B. Tessina, Elizabeth Friar Williams
    In the Battle of the Sexes, women came in second when it came to decision-making. This no-nonsense guide levels the playing field and gives women the edge on making smart decisions. Readers will learn how to implement "The Top Ten" in their own lives by resolving issues, setting goals, and listening to the "Wise Woman Within".

Rich Dad, Poor Dad : What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor & Middle Class Don't by Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter, Sharon L. Lechter
    I am greatly concerned by the growing gap between the "haves" and "have nots." In the next few years there will be great economic and political upheavals. Many of today's "haves" will join the "have nots." There will also be many more ultra-rich "haves" created. Great new fortunes are being made as we enter an age of unprecendented abundance and prosperity. Today, a great education is more important than ever before. But to continue to advise a child to simply, "Study hard, get good grades, and find a secure job," could be the most dangerous advice a parent could give a child. If a child follows that advice, they will probably wind up working harder, being paid less, paying more than their fair share in taxes, and remain in a high risk position of financial uncertainty. As I said, the rules have changed. This book will teach you the rules of money that the rich play by. They are not the same. May you find some new ideas from reading this book. Ideas by which you can insure greater economic security for you and those you love for generations to come.

Gender Issues:

Woman : An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier
    Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, as far as the health care profession is concerned the standard operating design of the human body is male. So when a book comes along as beautifully written and endlessly informative as Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, it's a cause for major celebration. Written with whimsy and eloquence, her investigation into female physiology draws its inspiration not only from scientific and medical sources but also from mythology, history, art, and literature, layering biological factoids with her own personal encounters and arcane anecdotes from the history of science. Who knew, for example, that the clitoris--with 8,000 nerve fibers--packs double the pleasure of the penis; that the gene controlling cellular sensitivity to male androgens, ironically enough, resides on the X-chromosome; or that stress hormones like cortisol and corticosterone are the true precursors of friendship?
    The mysteries of evolution are not a new subject for Angier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biology writer for the New York Times whose previous books include The Beauty of the Beastly and Natural Obsessions. The strengths of Woman begin with Angier's witty and evocative prose style, but its real contribution is the way it expands the definition of female "geography" beyond womb, breasts, and estrogen, down as far as the bimolecular substructure of DNA and up as high as the transcendent infrastructure of the human brain. --Patrizia DiLucchio
To read the introduction, go to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/categories/health/april-1999
-angier-excerpt/ref%3Dad%5Fhf1/002-5249241-3625608

Just Like a Woman: How Gender Science is Revealing What Makes Us Female by Dianne Hales
   The entry of more and more women into science, writes Dianne Hales, has started a quiet revolution, a reassessment of accepted notions of what it is to be a woman. "Women are not the second sex but a separate sex, female to the bone and to the very cells that make up those bones.... In affirming our femaleness, we are not diminishing or discrediting our mental ability or essential equality. Rather, we are recognizing a fundamental source of strength and sustenance."
    This "equal but different" stance is crucial to modern gender studies--heretofore, Hales says, most if not all medical and psychological research was done on men, and the conclusions recklessly applied to women. Now, science is finding out that females have their own unique strengths that equip them both for the biological roles they may choose to embrace as well as the societal roles they have often been denied. Hales explodes stereotypical notions of physiology and psychology in this well-researched and liberating book. --Therese Littleton

Mothers Who Think : A Salon Book by Camille Peri (Introduction), Kate Moses (Introduction)
    This book should come as manna to moms: a multitude of small, wry voices reminding them they're not alone. Mothers Who Think is a collection of pieces from the Salon magazine column of the same name. The column (and the book) has no fixed perspective, no set goal, no political agenda--just a bunch of women writers mouthing off about changing diapers. Okay, more than just diapers. There's Rahna Reiko Rizzuto on her gruesome labor ("the mucus plug ... fell out of my underwear and onto my husband's shoe"); hipMama editor Ariel Gore on family court ("I learned that two professionals on a case are usually worse than none. That three can be dangerous"); Susan Straight on being a single mom and taking care of everything yourself ("I just wish I didn't look so bad doing it"); and Elizabeth Rapoport on being a married mom and taking care of everything yourself ("I must confess I'm a little jaded by these sociological pissing contests. Just wake me when the dads are doing 50 percent. Period"). A couple of dozen others chime in as well, notably novelist Anne Lamott, New York Times reporter Alex Witchel, and sexpert Susie Bright.
    Editors Camille Peri and Kate Moses have created a chorus with range: this is not a stream of white, privileged voices interrupted only occasionally by news from the underclass, news from women of color, or news from sexual minorities. If anything, the book is too focused on a wide variety of very personal stories--one often wishes for the gesture of expansion, the linking of the personal to the cultural. Still, that's a small gripe to have with a book that takes us into the brainier, funnier kitchens of motherhood all over America.

Menstruation:
    Books

The Curse : Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo, Menstruation by Karen Houppert
    Village Voice reporter Karen Houppert intrepidly attacks the laissez-faire attitude of many "personal products" companies with The Curse, and her investigations should rabble-rouse women to action. Most notable is her pointed discussion of dioxin, a class A (most toxic of the toxins) carcinogen, and how studies have shown traces of it in tampons from every major U.S. manufacturer. Dioxin is a chemical that's been given "zero tolerance" status by the Environmental Protection Agency because of its strongly suspected link "to lower sperm counts in men, a higher probability of endometriosis in women, and a depressed immune system in both." However, Houppert quotes tampon spokespeople who deny any problem, even though a Food and Drug Administration memo mentions that "the risk of dioxin in tampons 'can be quite high.'" This is exceptionally creepy when you consider that the average American woman spends 36 years menstruating, and if she uses tampons, she'll eventually use more than 11,000 of them.
    Houppert's amusement with the approaches used by Tambrands and other makers of "female protection" is entertaining at times, but overall, it is purposefully acerbic, especially when it comes to marketing and the damage she claims it has wreaked on women's self-image. Houppert says these corporations have created a pervasive "culture of concealment" surrounding menstruation, perpetuated by advertising and single-sex "puberty education" classes in schools (which, she points out, are usually sponsored by such companies as Procter & Gamble, maker of the infamous Rely tampon that was implicated in 38 toxic shock syndrome-related deaths in 1980). While it seems comical now to see Tampax ads from the 1920s claiming to "permit daintiness at all times" and the campaign of the 1990s that asserts "No one will ever know you've got your period," Houppert successfully argues that the advertisements add a cruel sense of mystery and shame to menstruation. According to a survey from the 1980s that Houppert found during her research, more than 30 percent of adults questioned "thought women should cut down on their physical activities while menstruating" and an even higher percentage of teenage girls didn't know what was happening to them during their first period. And we wonder why teen pregnancy rates are so high.
    "Because ideas about menstruation tie into prevailing notions that women's bodies are dangerously permeable," Houppert writes, "they become a part of the controlling myths our culture has spun to manipulate our perceptions of ourselves and our sexuality. Menstrual etiquette is an element of a woman's experience that contributes to this disorienting effect." She points out that a woman is more likely to tell a coworker about an affair than walk down the hall to the restroom with a tampon in hand. Her book is a revelation, a brilliant analysis of corporate influence and personal shame and how both are detrimental to the health--physical and mental--of women. --Erica Jorgensen

Cotton Pads:

     Cotton Menstrual Pads

   
    Websites

  The Red Spot   http://onewoman.com/redspot/

  http://www.mum.org/

Parenting:

The Whole Parenting Guide : Strategies, Resources and Inspiring Stories for Holistic Parenting and Family Living by Alan Reder, Phil Catalfo, Stephanie Renfrow Hamilton, Renfrow hamil
    There are many parenting books available, but few approach the subject from a politically and culturally progressive slant. The Whole Parenting Guide presents a cohesive approach to family life and values that encompasses holistic health, interest in personal growth and spirituality, environmentalism, social conscience, appreciation of diversity, and rejection of materialism. Authors Alan Reder (writer for New Age magazine), Phil Catalfo (Raising Spiritual Children in a Material World), and Stephanie Renfrow Hamilton (former editor for Parenting and Essence) cover seven key areas of family life, including nutrition, alternative medicine, creativity, money matters, and community building. They include the practical--nonjudgmental and balanced information on sensitive and highly politically heated issues such as circumcision, vaccinations, and cloth vs. disposable diapers--as well as the philosophic--including keys to raising ethical children. From pregnancy to home schooling to community activism, this comprehensive guide book, complete with detailed sidebars, personal anecdotes from parents, and extensive listings of publications, will be a welcome addition to the progressive parent's library. --Ericka Lutz

Sleeping Through the Night. . . and Other Lies : The Mysteries, Marvels and Mayhem in the First Three Years of Parenthood by Sandi Kahn Shelton

You Might As Well Laugh... : Because Crying Will Only Smear Your Mascara
by Sandi Kahn Shelton

     Now I've written "Sleeping Through The Night... and Other Lies," because I think it's at the beginning of parenthood when people need most to know that they are not alone. The unvarnished truth is that none of us knows how to get a kid to stop screaming and go to sleep, or how to reason a toddler out of wanting to sleep with the drill bits. 
     Life with children is rich with laughter and promise--which is not to say that there aren't at least six times a day when you want to sneak off to join the space program. One minute you're wanting to scratch out the eyes of the 18-month-old next door who threw a truck at your precious child--and the next moment, you're thinking of hurling the truck at him yourself.
    The truth of parenthood--without getting too heavy about it--is that none of us believes we have it right. In good moments we can fake it; mostly we just muddle through, us and our kids, figuring it all out together as we go along.
    What helps? I think stories help. When we hear that others are also dressing their children in fast-food buckets and treading miles around the dining-room table with an 8-week-old with a stomachache, maybe we can feel less isolated, less to blame, less like we've somehow ruined our own lives.

Pregnancy

Maybe One : A Case for Smaller Families by Bill McKibben
    In Maybe One, Bill McKibben argues that the earth is becoming dangerously overcrowded, and that if more of us chose to have only one child, it would make a crucial difference toward insuring a healthy future for ourselves and our planet.
    But the environment alone may not persuade most people to consider having just one child, as eighty percent of Americans have siblings. Powerful stereotypes about only children--that they're spoiled, selfish, or maladjusted in some way--still persist. McKibben, the proud father of an only child himself, debunks these myths, citing research about the many emotional and intellectual strengths only children possess. Contrary to the old folk wisdom, only children are very much like everyone else; they are no more likely to be lonely, shy, or difficult to get along with than children with siblings. Only children also receive the benefits of more parental resources and time that are denied to kids with siblings: higher test scores and levels of achievement in school, and greater development of positive personality traits, like maturity and self-control.
    At once a powerful personal argument and an accessible exploration of what overpopulation could mean to human life, Maybe One is a provocative yet well-reasoned opening to what will be an important and lasting debate.

Pregnancy for Dummies by Joanne Stone, Keith Eddleman, Mary Murray
    If you're a first-time mother- or father-to-be and anxiously call the doctor once, twice, oh, maybe three times a day to air your concerns, you'll appreciate the wisdom in "Pregnancy for Dummies." Don't let the title turn you off:
it's encyclopedic in scope, with information on midwives, doulas, and other birthing options; a guide to your child's growth by trimester; and tips for when you need to call the doctor--and when you can just sit back and relax!