Professional Women

Shortly after arriving on Cape Cod to spend a year by herself, Joan Anderson’s chance encounter with a wise, playful, and astonishing woman helped her usher in the transformations and self-discoveries that led to her ongoing renewal. First glimpsed as a slender figure on a fogged-in beach, Joan Erikson was not only a friend and confidante when one was most needed, but also a guide as Anderson stretched and grew into her unfinished self.

Dialysis: a Memoir tells the story of how a young woman's life is changed forever when her kidneys fail. From hospitalization and hemodialysis to peritoneal dialysis and finally to a transplant, the memoir explores how her experience of illness clashes with the world around her: the buoyant and youthful atmosphere of the San Francisco Bay Area during the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s. The memoir describes how she learns to make sense of what happened and how she ultimately overcomes the physical and emotional challenges of kidney failure to thrive in her new life.

In Unemployable, Alysia Silberg, a start-up investor, AI expert, entrepreneur, and executive coach, shares her powerful story of survival and success, aided by the great equalizer–technology. Growing up in poverty in South Africa, Alysia experienced violence, abuse, and even a gunshot wound. Through determination and an unwavering commitment to learning, she made her way to America and Silicon Valley, becoming a lover and funder of start-ups, with a passion for AI.

In Mighty Justice, trailblazing African American civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree recounts her inspiring life story that speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times. From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation’s capital; from the male stronghold of the army where she broke gender and color barriers to the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister - in all these places, Dovey Johnson Roundtree sought justice.

Equal, Yet Different is exactly how women want to be treated, and need to be treated.Despite the growing number of women acquiring professional degrees, they remain under-represented and almost invisible when it comes to top leadership positions or decision-making roles. While women have proved...

As a teenage orphan in England in 1791, Mary Reibey was sentenced to death for stealing a horse. When police cornered her, she was dressed as a boy, and she maintained that disguise until she was unmasked at her trial. Due to her 'tender age', Reibey was spared the hangman's noose and sentenced to seven years' transportation to the colony of New South Wales. With the odds stacked against her, Reibey went on to become Australia's first female business tycoon and the richest woman in the colony, founding the Bank of New South Wales, now one of the nation's biggest financial institutions.

Documenting multiple challenges at every turn - as a target for racism from society at large and sexism both inside and outside of the Negro League - this is the unique story of the first woman to play professional baseball on a men's team, breaking barriers in sports while believing, "There's got to be a first in everything. Maybe it will be me." The text explains that as players began to leave the Negro League for major league teams, Toni Stone seized her only opportunity to play professional ball and replaced Henry Aaron on the Negro League's top team.

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

Atop a hill in the rainforest of Belize, next to the ruins of a fallen civilization, a butterfly farm raises the brilliant blue morpho. What starts out as the worst vacation ever turns into a quest to learn more about the first-of-its-kind farm when journalist Diana Marcum inadvertently discovers this wildlife sanctuary, which is supported by an international live-butterfly trade.

Women are at a disadvantage in the workplace, where they deal with unequal pay, sexual harassment, lack of credit for their contributions, and more. And while organizations are looking to address these issues, too many gender-inclusion initiatives focus exclusively on how women should respond, leaving men out of the equation. Such efforts reinforce the perception that these are "women's issues" and that men - often the most powerful stakeholders in an organization - don't need to be involved.

The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK is a world-leading scientific institution. This book, by LMB alumna Kathy Weston, is a collective portrait of women scientists who, as staff members, visitors, and trainees, helped build the LMB’s reputation as a powerhouse of science, often going on to stellar careers at other outstanding institutions around the world. Combining narrative history with interview transcripts and personal reminiscence, Weston’s book describes the career accomplishments of these successful scientists.

In The Millionairess Mentality, Hermes condenses years of wisdom accrued as the Wealth Building Concierge into easy-to-follow investment formulas anyone can use. The result is an indispensable handbook that teaches women the “millionairess mentality” they need to build a foundation of unshakeable wealth, one property at a time.

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this 'factory' progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear.

This raw and unflinching narrative delves into the inner world of an Australian midwife, her professional journey, recounting experiences of empowering women to make choices and confronting a system that resists change. From homebirth scenes to the hallways of a hospital amid the pandemic, this is a story marked by passion, burnout, peaks and valleys, tears and triumphs. Midwife Crisis is an unfiltered emotional journey, interwoven tales of birth and loss, encapsulating the joy of bringing life into the world along with the profound love and heartbreak intrinsic to the midwifery profession.

In Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome, Levenstein writes, with love and exasperation, about navigating her career through the renowned Italian tangle of brilliance and ineptitude, sexism and tolerance, rigidity and chaos. Part memoir starting with her epic quest for an Italian medical license and part portrait of Italy from a unique point of view, Dottoressa is packed with vignettes that illuminate the national differences in character, lifestyle, health, and health care between her two countries.

Manjusha Pawagi, a successful family court judge, has written a not-so-typical memoir about her experience with cancer. Wryly funny and stubbornly hopeful, this is her quirky take on what it’s like to face your own mortality when, to be honest, you thought you’d live forever. She describes how even the darkest moments of life can be made worse with roommates; details how much determination it takes to ignore the statistics; and answers the age-old question: What does it take to get a banana popsicle around here?

In the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina Crosby was three miles into a 17 mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected senior professor of English who had celebrated her 50th birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed.

Whether you’re a well-established industry figure or just starting off in your career, this guidebook to professionalism in the modern workplace will set you up for success. Leave Your Mark isn't an advice book -- it's a mentorship in 288 pages. Aliza Licht-global fashion communications...

Drawing from over three decades of experience, former CEO of AT&T Business Anne Chow shares groundbreaking strategies for inclusive leadership to transform your workforce, workplace, and business. For generations, when we’ve needed to innovate and grow, we’ve been told to “think...

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928) is the most famous female Classicist in history, the author of books that revolutionized our understanding of Greek culture and religion. A star in the British academic world, she became the quintessential Cambridge woman—as Virginia Woolf suggested when, in A Room of One's Own, she claims to have glimpsed Harrison's ghost in the college gardens. This lively and innovative portrayal of a fascinating woman raises the question of who wins (and how) in the competition for academic fame. Mary Beard captures Harrison's ability to create her own image.