We've just published two fantastic titles about two remarkable women who, in radically different times and circumstances, triumphed over extreme difficulties to create thought-provoking, lasting legacies.
As Slate's Dahlia Lithwick reminds us in her review of Barbara Babcok's Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz, "long before Hillary Clinton’s tears and Sarah Palin’s hockey mom, savvy American women were fighting their way into the public sphere, with a burp cloth in one hand and a copy of the Constitution in the other." Famous in her time, Clara Foltz was the first woman admitted to the California Bar and a renowned jury lawyer, public defender, legal reformer, and women's suffragist. Woman Lawyer recreates her accomplished life while shedding new light on the turbulent history and politics of the late nineteenth century.
Shahla Talebi offers an intimate, personal account of her own turbulent history in Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran (read Kirkus's rave review here).
Talebi tells of her imprisonment, twice, under two very different regimes in Iran, first under that of the Shah, then again, and for nearly a decade, under that of the Islamic Republic. Her unique perspective affords her an unprecedented opportunity to reflect on the nature of torture, government responsibility and, more simply, basic aspects of cruelty in daily life.
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