Two British journalists (the Sunday Times
) have assembled an edifying, historically astute, yet still entertaining collection of pieces written by women from diverse periodicals throughout the 20th century—from both sides of the Atlantic. So-called women's concerns dominate the subject categories, such as "Home & Family" (e.g., Eleanor Roosevelt's "My Day") and "Sex & Body Image" (e.g., Angela Carter's "Fat Is Ugly"), although the most riveting selections cover war and politics, such as Martha Gellhorn's "Dachau" and Marie Colvin's "The Arafat I Knew." Emma Goldman's floridly righteous anti-WWI essay "The Promoters of the War Mania" sets a thunderous tone; Nellie Bly's "Ten Days in a Madhouse" (1888) is the earliest selection, and suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst and even Zelda Fitzgerald ("What Became of the Flappers?") make appearances. Notable American writers are well represented, including Mary McCarthy ("Report from Vietnam"), Erica Jong ("Hillary's Husband Re-elected") and Joan Didion ("On Self-Respect"), and a few appear in surprising ways, such as novelists Djuna Barnes, in her early career as a gonzo journalist, recounting her experience being forcibly fed as a jailed suffragist (1914), and Anne Tyler in a hilarious character sendup of Maryland governor Marvin Mandel on trial (1977). (Jan.)
