Anne E. Kornblut

I wanted to think this book was amazing. I agree with many of Kornblut's points: I think there is still a lot of sexism in politics (well, in American culture in general) and more specifically, I do think it makes it harder for women to be viable candidates.

However, she sort of lost me in the section about Hillary Clinton where she talked about the divide between young female voters and their mothers and grandmothers. I consider myself a feminist, and yes, I am part of the third wave, but I'm not going to vote for Hillary Clinton simply because she is a woman and it would be ground-breaking, which is the point that I felt Kornblut was trying to make. Kornblut seems to think that young women feel like feminism is over, that any woman could be elected president at any time, and we just, like, don't care. (Seriously. One of the TWO young women she interviewed happened to use "like" in a sentence similiar to what I stated and that's what she chose to include in her book.) Heaven forbid I, as a young feminist, be sick of the Clintons. I should have laid aside the fact, that for the first time ever in my life, I felt excited about a political candidate and not like I was trying to choose the lesser evil and voted for Clinton because it was a historic moment for women. I guess I need to turn in my feminist card then.

I can see why Kornblut chose to include the statistics about how there was a divide between feminists on who to vote for. I just think she should have expanded her pool of third wave feminists beyond two interviews.… (altro)

This book that is mostly about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin could have been much better. A lot of what is writtten about the two women is neither flattering nor vetted as 100% true. Most of what is written will not be a surprise to any reader who has followed the 2008 presidential campaigns. A few other well-known political women are mentioned, such as Nancy Pelosi and Olympia Snowe, but in frustratingly little detail. The book overall seems to just skim the surface of all these very complicated women. I'm not sure what it says about the future of women who strive to reach the top but, in that regard, it was rather pessimistic.… (altro)