Articles

Half a century later, my husband and I decided to visit the country we had so long ago feared. When I told our friends that we were going to Vietnam I could see the question in their eyes. Why, of all places, did we want to go there? They had painful memories, too. And to be honest, I was concerned about how Americans would be viewed all these years later. more »

The Republican Party’s capture of the House of Representatives has feminists worried. As the 112th Congress convened, feminists held meetings and rallies all over the nation’s capitol where they spoke about Republican plans to reduce or dismantle programs that protect women. more »

Cleopatra: A Life — In the end, we must ask ourselves if Stacy Schiff, one of the most gifted American biographers currently writing, has successfully peeled away two millennia of myth and propaganda or, rather, given us a new myth, a Cleopatra who fits modern, Western feminist thinking. In the Pursuit of Happiness — To call Maria Kalman's work idiosyncratic isn’t nearly powerful enough to describe what she has produced. It is an explosion of such brilliance that one scarcely knows where to start more »

It wasn’t the reading of my weight that terrified me. After a lifetime of dieting (skip birth to age 10), for the past half dozen years I’ve held steady at 104. Poundage was not the problem. It was the ruler she was about to pull up, then down, then down again, to measure my height. more »