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Estelle B. Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine Books 2002)
WITH GREAT SKILL, historian Estelle B. Freedman synthesizes an enormous amount of interdisciplinary scholarship in this deceptively easy-to-read study of principal themes in contemporary feminist studies. Author of several books in US women's history and co-author with John D'Emilio of the frequently cited, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, her latest work, the dramatically titled, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women, originated in feminist studies courses she created in the Feminist Studies program at Stanford University. This reasonably priced paperback edition promises to find an audience amongst students not only of feminist studies, gender studies, and women's studies, but across a host of academic disciplines. Freedman invokes an historical approach to her history of feminism, bringing together recent works from disciplines of sociology, economics, politics, history, sexology, literature, and the arts, to name a few. As a work of synthesis, with appeal to a popular as well as academic audience, the breadth of material and scholarship which the author presents in a readily accessible narrative, works, in some ways, against an analysis in depth of some themes which are briefly discussed in the work. A discursive bibliography, footnotes, and index, however, will aid the reader in further pursuing sources cited in the text.
The book is divided into five parts, offering discussion of the "historical emergence of feminisms," "the politics of work and family," "the politics of health and sexuality," and " feminist visions and strategies," including present and future prospects. Following both chronological and thematic strategies, the book opens with two principal concepts which serve to unify the structure of the book: the idea and critique of patriarchy, and the historical emergence...