Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection
Spar, the president of Barnard College, delves into the eternal topic of women “having it all” by blending her own personal story within an overview of the past four decades. Some anecdotes will seem a bit over-the-top (tales of pumping breast milk in airport bathrooms while dashing off to a corporate meeting have become almost a cliché), but Spar’s artful juxtaposition of society’s conflicting promises and assertions rings through loud and clear. As she shifts from the reasoned research of academics to the grocery checkout lines with their masses of impossible celebrity weight-loss triumphs while providing the facts and figures of gender politics from the workplace to the dreaded department-store changing room, Spar’s acerbic wit  would do Dorothy Parker proud. Her own struggles with anorexia and fertility bring the topic down to earth, ensuring that Wonder Women is equally valuable as a reference source for college-bound daughters and as a lively read for their mothers to dissect in book clubs. --Colleen Mondor