Showing titles in Women

At 24, life was good for Georgie Dent. After graduating with top marks she landed her dream job at a prestigious Sydney law firm and moved in with a boyfriend she adored. She had the world at her feet and no right to break. But she did. Badly. Within a year Georgie was unemployed, back living with her parents and suffering such crippling anxiety that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Breaking Badly is the story of a nervous breakdown in slow motion, a life that fell apart and what it took to put it back together again.

Betty Ford: First Lady, Women’s Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer is the inspiring story of an ordinary Midwestern girl thrust onto the world stage and into the White House under extraordinary circumstances. Setting a precedent as first lady, Betty Ford refused to be silenced by her critics as she publicly championed equal rights for women and spoke out about issues that had previously been taboo - breast cancer, depression, abortion, and sexuality.

In June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Lyudmila Pavlichenko left her university studies and ignored the offer of a position as a nurse to become one of Soviet Russia's 2,000 female snipers. Less than a year later, she had 309 recorded kills, including 29 enemy sniper kills. She was withdrawn from active duty after being injured. She was also regarded as a key heroic figure for the war effort.

Close your eyes and get ready to see the world in a new and more positive way. As a child in Toronto, Molly Burke was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and became completely sightless as a teenager. Now an award-winning YouTube star and global influencer, Molly shares what it’s like to be a purple-haired, pink-obsessed fashion and makeup lover in a seeing world. She speaks with authenticity and candor about how she tackles the preconceived notions we have around blindness; Molly has made it her mission to make us see her - and ourselves- in a wholly empowering way.

In 1954, in a remote South American village, a four-year-old girl was abducted and then abandoned deep in the Colombian rainforest. So begins the incredible true story of Marina Chapman, who went on to spend several years alone in the jungle, her only family a troop of capuchin monkeys. Using instinct to guide her, she copied everything they did and soon learned to fend for herself. At around 10 years old, a completely feral Marina was returned to civilisation by hunters, who sold her as a slave to a brothel. Beaten daily and groomed to be a prostitute, she escaped - to live the perilous existence of a Colombian city street kid.

Sasson and Princess Sultana return to tell the world what it means to be a Saudi woman today. Through advances in education and with access to work, Saudi women are breaking through barriers; they are becoming doctors, social workers, business owners. Major steps forward have been made. But this is not the whole story. Sadly, despite changes in the law, women are still subjected to terrible suppression, abuse and crimes of psychological and physical violence.

On paper, Sarah Levy’s life was on track. She was 28, living in New York City, working a great job, and socializing every weekend. But Sarah had a secret: her relationship with alcohol was becoming toxic. And only she could save herself. Drinking Games explores the role alcohol has in our formative years, and what it means to opt out of a culture completely enmeshed in drinking. It’s an examination of what our short-term choices about alcohol do to our long-term selves and how they challenge our ability to be vulnerable enough to discover what we really want in life.

Early in her radio career Susie Ferguson became a war correspondent. The only woman among hundreds of soldiers, in a helmet and flak jacket she was one of the boys. None of them knew she was taking fifteen painkillers a day and relying on opioids to stem the burning and stabbing pain in her uterus. Even bloody-minded grit couldn't have prepared Susie for womanhood.

Funny, candid and unconventional: the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells her own story in this enchanting memoir. Baker took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. She became an icon. Hemingway, Jean Cocteau and Picasso admired her; Shirley Bassey adored her. It was told she strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah who wore a diamond collar.

Wherever Chelsea Handler travels, one thing is certain: she always ends up in the land of the ridiculous. Now, in this uproarious collection, she sneaks her sharp wit through airport security and delivers her most absurd and hilarious stories ever.

Who Wants Normal? lifts the lid off a subject that is too often shrouded in awkwardness and silence. It offers support, inspiration and a sense of solidarity to the many, many women with disabilities and long-term health issues – as well as opening the eyes of anyone wanting to better understand the many facets of living with a disability.

From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian and female that exposes how white America's love affair with 'diversity' so often falls short of its ideals. Austin Channing Brown's first encounter with a racialised America came at age seven, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man.

Her agent told her not to get on the plane. The male leads weren't even cast. The financing was shaky at best. The script had been rewritten countless times. And yet something about Wild Oats lured Shirley MacLaine to the film's location shoot in the far-off Canary Islands - and straight to the center of one of the most thrilling and paradigm-shifting adventures of her life.

This intimate and unflinching memoir explores Wen's struggle to survive, and confronts the belief that people don't change. Through appalling abuse and neglect, Wen finds a way to a very different kind of life, embodying resilience, healing and transformation. The story is woven through with the intriguing themes of Wen's life. With humility, understanding and beauty, she delves into the plight of a stammerer, the unbreakable bonds of twinship, and her body's need to dissociate.

Hannah Arendt is one of the most renowned political thinkers of the twentieth century, and her work has never been more relevant than it is today. Born in Germany in 1906, Arendt published her first book at the age of twenty-three, before turning away from the world of academic philosophy to reckon with the rise of the Third Reich. After World War II, Arendt became one of the most prominent—and controversial—public intellectuals of her time, publishing influential works such as The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Her nomination marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father, broke through a racial barrier—but no one knew it. Oberon was "passing" for white. In the first biography of Oberon in more than forty years, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and untapped archival material to capture the life of an oft-forgotten talent.

When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father’s tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window. Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn’t used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia.

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.

Josephine's life story was as turbulent as the age, an era of revolution and social upheaval, of the guillotine and of frenzied hedonism. With telling psychological depth and compelling literary grace, Carolly Erickson brings the complex, charming, ever resilient Josephine to life in this memorable portrait, one that carries the reader from the sensual richness of her childhood in the tropics to her final lonely days at Malmaison.

More than seven years after his death, Michael Jackson continues to fascinate the world. Shana Mangatal was one of Jackson's only constant and true rocks of stability for nearly two decades. Their relationship was quiet and sweet and real - a closely guarded secret, known only to a few trusted employees and friends. Shana is now coming forward to tell their love story. Her story is rich with every little detail.