Books About Women
  • Welcome to the World of Real Women
  • Bibliography of all books listed on this site
  • Business
    • Business
  • Celebrities/Entertainers
    • Celebrities/Entertainers
  • Education
    • Education
  • Family
    • Family
  • Friendship
    • Friendship
  • History/Politics
    • History/Politics--Africa
    • History/Politics--Asia
    • History/Politics--Europe
    • History/Politics--Middle East
    • History/Politics--United States
  • Illness, Aging, Death
    • Illness, Aging, Death
  • Religion/Spirituality
    • Religion/Spirituality
  • Science
    • Science
  • Sports
    • Sports
  • Travel
    • Travel
  • Recommended books in 2011
  • Recommended books in 2012
  • Recommended books in 2013
  • Recommended books in 2014
  • Recommended books 2015
  • Recommended books in 2016
  • Recommended in 2017
  • Recommended in 2018
  • Recommended in 2019
  • Contact
  • Recommended in 2020
  • Recommended in 2021
Picture
December Monthly Book Feature
Tina Turner:  My Love Story

From her early years in Nutbush, Tennessee to her rise to fame alongside Ike Turner to her phenomenal success in the 1980s and beyond, Tina candidly examines her personal history, from her darkest hours to her happiest moments and everything in between.

My Love Story is an explosive and inspiring story of a woman who dared to break any barriers put in her way. Emphatically showcasing Tina’s signature blend of strength, energy, heart, and soul, this is a gorgeously wrought memoir as enthralling and moving as any of her greatest hits.
​​








Picture
November Monthly Book Feature
by Susan Rice


Recalling pivotal moments from her dynamic career on the front lines of American diplomacy and foreign policy, Susan E. Rice—National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama and US Ambassador to the United Nations—reveals her surprising story with unflinching candor.

Mother, wife, scholar, diplomat, and fierce champion of American interests and values, Susan Rice powerfully connects the personal and the professional. Taught early, with tough love, how to compete and excel as an African American woman in settings where people of color are few, Susan now shares the wisdom she learned along the way.
  
​



Picture
October Monthly Book Feature
My Girls 
by Todd Fisher


Todd shares his heart and his memories of his mother and sister, Debbie and Carrie, with deeply personal stories from his earliest years to those last unfathomable days. His book, part memoir, part homage, celebrates their legacies through a more intimate, poignant, and often hilarious portrait of these two remarkable women than has ever been revealed before.
​
 


Picture
September Monthly Book Feature
 Murder, Motherhood and Miraculous   Grace
 by Debra Moerke

 When Debra Moerke and her husband   decided to become foster parents, they   never imagined how their lives would   change. Debra became especially close to   one little girl: four-year-old Hannah. She   loved her and did everything she could to   help Hannah learn to trust and teach her to   feel safe. But when Hannah went back to her birth mother, Karen, it wasn’t long before one of Debra’s worst fears came true.Overwhelmed with horror and grief, Debra didn’t think she could take anymore, but then she received a phone call from prison. Karen, facing a life sentence, was pregnant, and she had a shocking question to ask . 
Murder, Motherhood, and Miraculous Grace is an incredible true story of faith, family, and a journey toward seemingly impossible forgiveness. A story that tests the limits of the human heart, it’s ultimately a life-affirming testament to how unconditional love and relentless obedience can transform even the darkest nights into mornings of hope.




Picture



 August Monthly Book Feature
 When I Was White
 by Sarah Valentine


 At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered t   that she was not, in fact, the white girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race.

And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from white to black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her white identity. The supreme discomfort her white family and community felt about addressing issues of race–her race–is a microcosm of race relationships in America.

A black woman who lived her formative years identifying as white, Sarah's story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her "passing" was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she'd grown up with, in order to embrace a new one.


​
July Monthly Book Feature
The World According to Fannie Davis
by Bridgett Davis

In 1958, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother.
Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts."
A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.

Picture
​June Monthly Book Feature
 The Woman Who Smashed Codes
 by Jason Fagone

 Jason Fagone chronicles the life of an   extraordinary woman, who played an integral   role in our nation’s history for forty years.   After  World War I, Smith used her talents to   catch gangsters and smugglers during   Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to   discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were   spreading like wildfire across South America,   advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Fagone unveils America’s code-breaking history through the prism of Smith’s life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence.



Picture
April Monthly Book Feature
 The Genius of Women
 by Janice Kaplan

Even in this time of rethinking women’s roles, we define genius almost exclusively through male achievement. When asked to name a genius, people mention Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Steve Jobs. As for great women? In one survey, the only female genius anyone listed was Marie Curie.
 Janice Kaplan set out to determine why the extraordinary work of so many women has been brushed aside. Using her unique mix of memoir, narrative, and inspiration, she makes surprising discoveries about women geniuses now and throughout history, in fields from music to robotics. Through interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and dozens of women geniuses at work in the world today—including Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold and AI expert Fei-Fei Li—she proves that genius isn't just about talent. It's about having that talent recognized, nurtured, and celebrated.


Picture
March Monthly Book Feature
 Diamond Doris
 by Doris Payne


This is the memoir of the world's most notorious jewel thief - a woman who defied society's prejudices and norms to carve her own path, and live out her dreams.
She stole diamonds from the people who underestimated her, she exploited the men who tried to domesticate her, and she consistently defied society's assumptions and prejudices to create a new life for herself. For fans of Catch Me If You Can, The Wolf of Wall Street and Molly's Game, this is the newest must-read crime autobiography.




February Monthly Book Feature
  Eliza Hamilton
  by Tilar Mazzeo


 If you fell in love with Eliza Hamilton—Alexander Hamilton’s devoted wife—in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton you probably left the theater wanting to know more about her.   A strong pioneer woman, a loving sister, a caring mother, and in her later years, a generous philanthropist, Eliza had many sides—and this fascinating biography brings her multi-faceted personality to vivid life.

​
January Monthly Book Feature
Life Undercover:  Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox

If you ever wondered what it would be like to be a a spy for the CIA, you can get a glimpse into this world by reading Life Undercover by Amaryllis Fox.  Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor, Daniel Pearl, was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world. At 21, she was recruited by the CIA.  At 22, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to "the Farm", where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity. At the end of this training, she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.  In her story she shares the challenges that life in the CIA present both in her personal and professional life.  
​