100 books like Space Crone

By Ursula K. Le Guin,

Here are 100 books that Space Crone fans have personally recommended if you like Space Crone. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society

Susanna Erlandsson Author Of Personal Politics in the Postwar World: Western Diplomacy Behind the Scenes

From my list on everyday gendered practices and political power.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian with a doctorate and years of experience in diplomatic history. While researching a foreign minister’s policy decisions, I stumbled across his wife’s diaries. Later, I went back to read them. What started as sheer curiosity turned into a mission when I realised how vital diplomats’ wives were to the functioning of twentieth-century diplomacy. Yet I had spent years in the field without reading about the influence of gender. I wrote a book to bridge the gap and challenge the idea that diplomatic history can disregard gender if its focus is political. The books on my list show how everyday gendered practices are connected to political power.

Susanna's book list on everyday gendered practices and political power

Susanna Erlandsson Why did Susanna love this book?

Before I read Women and States, I was familiar with the concept of like-minded states and aware that similar or different normative values could complicate or facilitate the cooperation between states.

Yet, I had never considered those norms in terms of international status. Political scientist Ann Towns convincingly argues that, like any society, international society is social. To arrange relations, whether familial, local, or global, norms are used to compare and rank.

Contrary to a society built on shared values, though, international society incorporates parallel and conflicting values in an inherently unequal system, making for the coupling of norms to international status.

I love how Towns uses this simple and elegant observation to connect the political emancipation of women in different national contexts to (changing) hierarchical norms between states. Identifying links like these between local and so-called big politics is vital for better understanding international power relations.

By Ann E. Towns,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Women and States as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Momentous changes in the relation between women and the state have advanced women's status around the globe. Women were barred from public affairs a century ago, yet almost every state now recognizes equal voting rights and exhibits a national policy bureau for the advancement of women. Sex quotas for national legislatures are increasingly common. Ann E. Towns explains these changes by providing a novel account of how norms work in international society. She argues that norms don't just provide standards for states, they rank them, providing comparative judgments which place states in hierarchical social orders. This focus on the link…


Book cover of My First Book Of Feminism (for Boys)

Virginia Mendez Author Of Childhood Unlimited: Parenting Beyond the Gender Bias

From my list on challenging gender stereotypes with your children.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am Virginia Mendez, mother of 2 and author of 2 children’s books and a parenting book about the topic of gender equality from childhood. My day job is in Diversity and Inclusion Consulting, and I train companies and schools on how to bring more gender equality into their organisations. I wasn’t always a feminist, but I was by the time I was pregnant with my first child, and it made me determined to make the world a more fair place for everyone. Everyone. 

Virginia's book list on challenging gender stereotypes with your children

Virginia Mendez Why did Virginia love this book?

This is an absolute favourite of mine as a gift for new baby boys.

It is in rhyme and has very easy illustrations. It is never too early to let people know that feminism is for everyone, including boys, and to show in an easy way the things that they can do to help but also expand the options for them. 

By Julie Merberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked My First Book Of Feminism (for Boys) as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Feminism begins at home—and My First Book of Feminism (for Boys) is where it begins!

Simple illustrations paired with engaging, rhyming text make the compelling, age appropriate argument that girls and boys are equal, plain and simple. Humorous, familiar scenarios are treated as teachable moments for very young boys (ages 0-3) who will ideally grow up without ever questioning women's equality. From "no means no," to "women's rights are human rights," important, grownup ideas are made clear and fun for young, impressionable minds. This is the book every mom should read to her son!


Book cover of The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present

Ellen Carol DuBois Author Of Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote

From my list on the history of women's rights.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing about the history of women's rights and women's suffrage for over fifty years. Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote offers a comprehensive history of the full three-quarters of a century of women's persistent suffrage activism. I began my work inspired by the emergence of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s and this most recent history appeared in conjunction with the 2020 Centennial of the Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. My understanding of the campaign for full citizenship for women repeatedly intersects with the struggles for racial equality, from abolition to Jim Crow. Today, when American political democracy is under assault, the long history of woman suffrage activism is more relevant than ever.

Ellen's book list on the history of women's rights

Ellen Carol DuBois Why did Ellen love this book?

I am recommending this book because it is a beautifully written, originally argued overview of women’s rights long history. Stansell organizes her compelling history of women’s rights around the shift from mothers’ perspectives (nineteenth-century feminism) to daughters’ perspectives (twentieth century). She writes beautifully and sweeps over this long tradition without minimizing the disagreements, shifts, and changes, all the while emphasizing the consistent theme of women’s individual freedom and collective struggle.

By Christine Stansell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Feminist Promise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“A unique, elegant, learned sweep through more than two centuries of women’s efforts to overcome the most fundamental way that human beings have been wrongly divided into the leaders and the led. It’s full of surprises from the past and guiding lights for the future.”—Gloria Steinem

For more than two centuries, the ranks of feminists have included dreamy idealists and conscientious reformers, erotic rebels and angry housewives, dazzling writers,shrewd political strategists, and thwarted workingwomen. Well-known leaders are sketched from new angles by Stansell, with her bracingeye for character: Mary Wollstonecraft, the passionate English writer who in 1792 published the first…


Exchange Student

By Michael R. Lane,

Book cover of Exchange Student

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Michael R. Lane Author Of The Gem Connection

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Why am I passionate about this?

As an avid reader, I read a wide variety of books. Of the fiction genre mystery and suspense remain my favorite. From the classics to the gritty, a well-told mystery is a literary gem. As my mystery palette has aged—like my taste in wine—so are my demands of what makes a good mystery novel. The best mysteries for me contain more than a serpentine journey toward the hidden truth. They have intriguing characters, crisp dialogue, interesting settings, formidable foes, and of course indispensable heroes or anti-heroes. My writing goal is aimed at achieving the same level of literary penmanship of the mysteries I enjoy reading so much.

Michael's book list on African American mysteries

What is my book about?

Daniel “Dan” Bluford is the Director of Polar City Single Organism Research Lab Facilities. A business he helped to create. The world’s leading architect of sustainable, ecologically conscious products for energy, manufacturing, water treatment, waste management, and environmental clean-up equipment. A company whose mission statement read in part, “Better environment through industry.”

Unable to stay awake on his drive home after work, the loving husband and father stopped for coffee at a familiar coffee shop. The place was empty, aside from a lone barista. A young woman with a sacred Maori chin tattoo and an infectious smile. Shortly afterward, Dan…

Exchange Student

By Michael R. Lane,

What is this book about?

Daniel "Dan" Bluford is the Director of Polar City Single Organism Research Lab Facilities. A business he helped to create. The world's leading architect of sustainable, ecologically conscious products for energy, manufacturing, water treatment, waste management, and environmental clean-up equipment. A company whose mission statement read in part, "Better environment through industry."

Unable to stay awake on his drive home after work, the loving husband and father stopped for coffee at a familiar coffee shop. The place was empty, aside from a lone barista. A young woman with a sacred Maori chin tattoo and an infectious smile.

Dan decides to…


Book cover of Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work

Keisha Blair Author Of Holistic Wealth Expanded and Updated: 36 Life Lessons to Help You Recover from Disruption, Find Your Life Purpose, and Achieve Financial Freedom

From my list on building a wealth mindset.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a trained Economist and Harvard Trained Policy Expert. I was part of the Prime Minister's supporting delegation to the World Economic Forum, ASEAN and APEC Summits in Singapore. I'm the Founder of the Institute on Holistic Wealth and I am the host of the Holistic Wealth podcast. I wrote a viral article entitled "My Husband Died At Age 34. Here Are 40 Life Lessons I Learned From It". The article was viewed by more than 50 million people globally and led to the publication of my first book on Holistic Wealth, where I coined the term "Holistic Wealth". I have now written three books on Holistic Wealth that have been published globally.

Keisha's book list on building a wealth mindset

Keisha Blair Why did Keisha love this book?

I also interviewed Reshma Saujani on the Holistic Wealth podcast – also one of our most popular episodes.

She’s the founder of Girls Who Code, Marshall Plan for Moms and is working to close the gender gap in the tech sector and more recently advocating for moms during the global pandemic. I’m a big fan of immigrant stories and her parents’ story of how they came to the United States as refugees in 1973 from India is inspiring.

In her book Pay Up, she outlines how society has sold women an unsustainable narrative - that to break glass ceiling and succeed in their careers, all they needed to do is “dream big, raise their hands, and lean in”. However, fifty-one percent of women say that their mental health has declined, while anxiety and depression rates have skyrocketed.

In the book, Reshma dismantles the myth of “having it all” and lifts…

By Reshma Saujani,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Pay Up as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The founder of Girls Who Code and bestselling author of Brave, Not Perfect confronts the “big lie” of corporate feminism and presents a bold plan to address the burnout and inequity harming America’s working women today.

We told women that to break glass ceilings and succeed in their careers, all they needed to do is dream big, raise their hands, and lean in. But data tells a different story. Historic numbers of women left their jobs in 2021, resulting in their lowest workforce participation since 1988. Women’s unemployment rose to nearly fifteen percent, and globally women lost…


Book cover of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Katharine Quarmby Author Of The Low Road

From my list on female characters who rise from the ashes.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer who loves reading novels, encompassing everything from romance to historical and crime. I've always loved resilient female characters in the books I've read, from children’s fiction onward. When I started writing The Low Road I didn’t know that a couple of years later we as a family would experience multiple bereavement in just a few months, and that grief is imbued in every page of the novel. In The Low Road, I hope I've also paid homage to the power of women, that dogged and patient holding on and enduring of pain, that is at the heart of so many of the lives we live as girls and women.

Katharine's book list on female characters who rise from the ashes

Katharine Quarmby Why did Katharine love this book?

There is a shelf in the hallway full of battered books by women I read when I was a student and shortly afterwards – the books that I read and gave me those shivers of recognition – of feeling that this writer is speaking directly to me.

At some point some other young feminist must have told me, read this. And I did, and I can still remember certain passages that I read and re-read and sometimes copied out in my spidery handwriting to act as my mantras, then and now.

It’s a call to arms, it’s a passionate beating of the female breast, it’s the making of the heroine that we all need as women – Britain’s first feminist who spoke for quirky females everywhere when she wrote in a letter to her sister Everina, “I am not born to tread in the beaten track.”

But this is digression,…

By Mary Wollstonecraft,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

Writing just after the French and American revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft firmly established the demand for women's emancipation in the context of the ever-widening urge for human rights and individual freedom that followed in the wake of these two great upheavals. She thereby opened the richest, most productive vein in feminist thought; and her success can be judged by the fact that her once radical polemic, through the efforts of the innumerable writers and activists she influenced, has become the accepted wisdom of the modern era. The present edition contains a substantial essay by a major scholar to celebrate the bicentenary…


Book cover of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny

Kara Alaimo Author Of Over The Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls - And How We Can Take it Back

From my list on what it’s like to be a woman in this sexist, misogynistic world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a communication professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, a social media user, and a mom. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an op-ed for CNN arguing that he’d won the election on social media, and I just never stopped writing. A few hundred op-eds and a book later, I’m still interested in what social media is doing to us all and the issues women are up against in our society. My book allowed me to explore how social media is impacting every single aspect of the lives of women and girls and exactly what we can do about it. I wrote it as a call to arms.

Kara's book list on what it’s like to be a woman in this sexist, misogynistic world

Kara Alaimo Why did Kara love this book?

Kate Manne offers the best definitions of sexism (men thinking they’re better than women) and misogyny (men punishing women for displeasing them) that I’ve ever read. And she brings receipts, showing examples of how these two things play out in everything from novels to politics to crimes to classrooms.

Once I read her book, it was impossible for me not to spot more examples pretty much everywhere I went in the world.

By Kate Manne,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Down Girl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics, by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some
men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women…


Book cover of Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience

Sydney Calkin Author Of Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom across Borders

From my list on abortion and reproductive rights.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a feminist academic and activist, I am personally committed to the cause of reproductive freedom. Professionally, I've spent the past seven years carrying out research on abortion pills and their travels around the globe. This research involved more than eighty interviews with activists and doctors across the world, as well as analysis of many different text sources. My work has also taken me into activist spaces across Europe, as a volunteer with the Abortion Support Network. Although I entered the topic of reproductive rights through my interest in abortion, reading widely in the field has led me to pursue research interests in reproductive and biomedical technologies in other areas of sexual and reproductive health. 

Sydney's book list on abortion and reproductive rights

Sydney Calkin Why did Sydney love this book?

Today, struggles for abortion access are usually focused on legislatures and courts. These can seem like the only avenues for achieving change.

Yet Seizing the Means of Reproduction gives us an alternative picture of reproductive health and abortion politics, by exploring the history of the women’s health movement in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s.

Activists in this movement saw doctors and hospitals as powerful male-dominated institutions that exerted too much power over women’s bodies. In response, the activists developed new models for practicing reproductive health to give people power over their own bodies and reproductive activities. Self-managed abortion was one important part of their work, and Murphy’s book explores this history in lively detail.

The activists in Murphy’s narrative built their own self-help groups and resources outside of mainstream medical institutions, deliberately, because they saw this as the pathway for achieving women’s emancipation.

By Michelle Murphy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Seizing the Means of Reproduction as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Seizing the Means of Reproduction, Michelle Murphy's initial focus on the alternative health practices developed by radical feminists in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s opens into a sophisticated analysis of the transnational entanglements of American empire, population control, neoliberalism, and late-twentieth-century feminisms. Murphy concentrates on the technoscientific means-the technologies, practices, protocols, and processes-developed by feminist health activists. She argues that by politicizing the technical details of reproductive health, alternative feminist practices aimed at empowering women were also integral to late-twentieth-century biopolitics.

Murphy traces the transnational circulation of cheap, do-it-yourself health interventions, highlighting the uneasy links between…


Book cover of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900

Nancy A. Hewitt Author Of Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds

From my list on racial politics and women’s activism in the US.

Why am I passionate about this?

In Rochester, New York, where I was raised, Susan Anthony and Frederick Douglass are local heroes. But in the late 1960s, I was drawn more to grassroots movements than charismatic leaders. Despite dropping out of college—twice—I completed a B.A. in 1974 and then pursued a PhD in History. My 1981 dissertation and first book focused on three networks of mainly white female activists in nineteenth-century Rochester. Of the dozens of women I studied, Amy Post most clearly epitomized the power of interracial, mixed-sex, and cross-class movements for social justice. After years of inserting Post in articles, textbooks, and websites, I finally published Radical Friend in hopes of inspiring scholars and activists to follow her lead. 

Nancy's book list on racial politics and women’s activism in the US

Nancy A. Hewitt Why did Nancy love this book?

By 2007, I had been studying movements for women’s rights and racial justice for 4 decades. This book inspired me to rethink the chronology and trajectory of both. All Bound Up Together highlights the ways, beginning in 1830, that Black women’s rights efforts were central to the Black freedom struggle and early American feminism. It recasts both stories by putting Black women’s concerns, ideas, and organizing at the center.    

By Martha S. Jones,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked All Bound Up Together as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The place of women's rights in African American public culture has been an enduring question, one that has long engaged activists, commentators, and scholars. ""All Bound Up Together"" explores the roles black women played in their communities' social movements and the consequences of elevating women into positions of visibility and leadership. Martha Jones reveals how, through the nineteenth century, the ""woman question"" was at the core of movements against slavery and for civil rights. Unlike white women activists, who often created their own institutions separate from men, black women, Jones explains, often organized within already existing institutions - churches, political…


Book cover of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

Kim Imas Author Of Beast Mom

From my list on women and anger.

Why am I passionate about this?

We talk a lot about the big public events that expanded the #MeToo movement so astronomically, like the election to the US presidency of a man who bragged about assaulting women, and the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein. But I think most American women have other, more personal beefs that originate from their being a woman. I, for one, was shocked at how unnecessarily difficult it was to be a new mother in the US. Other places support this vulnerable group much more than we do here, and living that disparity angered me—like, for example, when my husband exhausted what little parental leave he had available before our twins were even released from the NICU.

Kim's book list on women and anger

Kim Imas Why did Kim love this book?

I love Eltahawy’s approach to solving the problems of the patriarchy: She wants to teach and encourage women and girls to do all the things we’re taught not to do, specifically a series of seven dubitable “sins” that have been instilled in females for centuries.

She begins by promoting the expression of anger, which like the rest of the traits on her list is something that women have been told is harmful, unfeminine, and wrong. But Eltahawy is—admirably, inspiringly—driven to flip it on its head, thereby turning it into an asset that can be employed to improve conditions for all of us.

By Mona Eltahawy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A bold and uncompromising feminist manifesto that shows women and girls how to defy, disrupt, and destroy the patriarchy by embracing the qualities they’ve been trained to avoid.

Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what she calls the “seven necessary sins” that women and girls are not supposed to commit: to be angry, ambitious, profane, violent, attention-seeking, lustful, and powerful. All the necessary “sins” that women and girls require to erupt.

Eltahawy knows that the patriarchy is alive and…


Book cover of Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935

Douglas Flowe Author Of Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York

From my list on race, crime, and American imprisonment.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an Associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis who is primarily interested in crime, illicit leisure, masculinity, American cities, and imprisonment. I grew up both in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and I received a PhD from the University of Rochester. Most of the books I read have to do with understanding the American criminal justice system, criminality itself, and the part societies play in constructing crime. Currently I am researching and writing a book about African American men and the carceral state, tentatively entitled Jim Crow Prison.  

Douglas' book list on race, crime, and American imprisonment

Douglas Flowe Why did Douglas love this book?

I first read Hick’s history of black women in New York’s criminal justice system while I was in graduate school, and I was fascinated by how she brought stories to life in a city I was so familiar with.

Along with Kali Gross’s Colored Amazons, which looks at black women in Philadelphia, it inspired me to imagine what a similar study on black men could look like.

Hicks masterful use of the New York State prison archives and her attention to the details in the lives of the women in her work makes this an essential book for anyone interested in race, gender, and the carceral state. 

By Cheryl D. Hicks,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Talk with You Like a Woman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With this book, Cheryl Hicks brings to light the voices and viewpoints of black working-class women, especially southern migrants, who were the subjects of urban and penal reform in early-twentieth-century New York. Hicks compares the ideals of racial uplift and reform programs of middle-class white and black activists to the experiences and perspectives of those whom they sought to protect and, often, control. In need of support as they navigated the discriminatory labor and housing markets and contended with poverty, maternity, and domestic violence, black women instead found themselves subject to hostility from black leaders, urban reformers, and the police.…


Book cover of Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society
Book cover of My First Book Of Feminism (for Boys)
Book cover of The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present

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