100 books like Women & Power

I loved this book for the way Madeline Miller creatively retells Greek myths with a female protagonist. As Circe grows up, she discovers her power of magic, which can transform enemies into monsters and even challenge the gods.

Bold and inspiring, Miller vividly strings together figures like Prometheus, Medea, Calypso, Odysseus, and the Minotaur in a feminist reimagining of Circe's life. I find it to be a thoughtful and well-crafted biography of a complex and engaging mythological character with both divine and human strengths and flaws. I have read it several times, and the story has maintained its appeal.

Ever since reading this book, I *can’t* think of the original version of the Iliad without referencing his haunting retelling from Patroclus’ perspective. Miller did such an incredible job putting me in the story and making the characters so real that I actively missed them when I put the book down.

It doesn’t hurt that it has some of the most beautiful poetic language I’ve encountered in story form. Helen is more of a background character playing her classic role, but I was still fascinated because Miller plays on the demigod aspect of both Helen and Achilles in a way that makes them steal any scene they’re in. There’s a quiet power to them that transcends the page.    

This is a very accessible introduction to six of the most powerful women of Egypt, women whose actions took place around, and sometimes as, pharaohs. Little-known queens, Merneith, Tawosret, and Neferusobek are considered alongside Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra. This approach helps Cooney to weave together a compelling story about female lives and expectations for women in ancient Egypt, and how this shaped these individuals’ access, use, and justifications for wielding power, some of which sound very familiar to discussions about women who hold power in our own time.

The evidence is necessarily patchy and the arguments sometimes speculative, as Cooney brings in much recent research and includes extensive footnotes that are well worth reading to understand the various debates that are underway in the field right now.

This story has always struck me as a quest to identify and regain humanity, as its hero repeatedly faces strange and powerful obstacles to his voyage home. I first read it as a child and then again, but in Greek, as a student—a time in life when anyone is trying to find their feet as a human being!

Perhaps the most comforting thing is that amongst all the gods and monsters and cursing and fighting, eating habits often characterize the work’s characters. Odysseus is always looking for sitophagoi, bread eaters, i.e. civilized people who make their own food, rather than man-eating monsters. I can identify with a hero looking for nice people to share a nice meal with.

Weber’s biography of Marie Antoinette offers a unique take on the foreign queen’s story. Using fashion as a tool to explore her life at the tumultuous court of Versailles, Weber craftily paints a vivid picture of her flaws and her role in the tragic end of the monarchy.

Having researched Marie Antoinette for my own books, I felt that Weber’s biography did the best job of transporting me into her world. As a history buff, I was amazed at the importance of the queen’s wardrobe, hair, and accessories. It was also an introduction to her hairdresser and her milliner, two important characters who made the queen the fashion icon of Europe at the time.

The eighteenth-century Russian princess Ekaterina Dashkova deserves your attention. This well-travelled woman was a friend of Catherine the Great, an author and playwright, wrote one of the earliest autobiographies known in Russia, held public office as President of the Academy of Sciences, and was instrumental in establishing the Russian Academy, of which she then became Director. 

Her entertaining memoirs take us into the inner circle of the Empress’ world, offer an entrée into the literary salons of Europe, and allow us to listen in on her scientific and intellectual exchanges with Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, and Diderot. Long accessible only in French, the language of Russian aristocratic society, this English edition opens up her world to new readers.

Jung Chang, best known as the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, here turns her considerable creative skill to the story of the woman who rose to the height of power in one of the world’s most important empires. Cixi’s trajectory from concubine to mother of the Tongzhi Emperor reminds us how sexual and reproductive labour are often critical to women’s access to power. 

Chang locates Cixi’s personal experiences, enjoying extreme luxury in secluded palaces yet displaying keen interest in the outside world that China was forced to confront, against a grand narrative of extraordinary changes to the empire Cixi was charged to safeguard. Chang presents a strongly sympathetic analysis of Cixi but the complex ambitions, many contradictions and perceived failures of this powerful woman ensure that she will remain the subject of continued debate.

Talking about Penelope brings me to the Penelopiad. This book could have been more accurately called the Trial of Odysseus.

Odysseus here feels like an ancient Andrew Tate. Picture the ancient soap opera: Penelope, the ever dutiful, saintly wife, is left holding the fort while Odysseus sails off on a ten-year vacation fighting the Trojan War, followed by another decade of epic escapades and sexscapades.

And meanwhile Penelope is using her twelve maids to let themselves be used and abused by her suitors to buy time till Odysseus returns. Well, the suitors are killed, naturally. But the maids…Honor killing is still an epidemic in parts of India, and to see it from the POVs of the maids, who have so far been overlooked as extras in a play, felt like redemption.

The best thing in the book that worked for me was the way it is structured as a conversation… show more.

I love the descriptions Pat Barker, a British author, uses as she delves into the cruelty and ugliness of war. This reframe of victors, the Greeks who are winners of the Trojan War is richly written; the characters of the captors are despicable as they live in the ruins of a glorious city, enslaving women, but punished by their gods who trap them away from their homes.

Revenge is in the air as the raped and degraded Trojan women, spoils of the war, conspire while living with their Greek captors. What I love about it, above all, is the bleak description of a brutal patriarchy.

The author is one of Ireland’s most respected historians. In this superb analysis, he explores the public and private worlds of Irish sex. 

Over the decades, Irish society, hand-in-hand with a dominant Catholic Church, succeeded in silencing generations of women.

We are still trying to come to terms with the iniquitous system of Magdalen Laundries and mother and baby homes, where pregnant young girls and women were hidden from sight so that the public would not be shamed by their sexual transgressions.

The text is accessible and illuminating. It explores hidden areas of modern Irish society and is a must-read, in my view, for anyone interested in this country.