cover image Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change the World

Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change the World

Pat Mitchell. Seal, $28 (304p) ISBN 978-1-58005-929-9

Mitchell, former president of CNN Productions and TEDWomen cofounder, chronicles her distinguished career in this engrossing debut that calls for all women to advocate for themselves and others. Born in rural Georgia to a military family, Mitchell met her father for the first time at age three, when he returned from WWII. She became an English professor and eventually moved to New York to pursue a career in journalism. After working her way up as a network reporter, anchor, and producer, she started her own production company and was recruited by Ted Turner to join CNN in 1992. Jumping back-and-forth across her life and career, Mitchell revisits relationships that helped shape her trajectory, such as those with Jane Fonda and Eve Ensler, and reveals traumas from her formative years that she has come to terms with thanks to therapy, including feelings of inadequacy and her being sexually abused as a child. Mitchell also includes interviews with other “dangerous women” who are unafraid of “speaking the truth when the silence is safer,” among them director Ava DuVernay, first woman president of Ireland Mary Robinson, and actress Monique Wilson. In revealing, bold prose, Mitchell tells a remarkable story of perseverance that will inspire any reader. [em](Oct.) [/em]