This is an important book deserving of a wide audience. I was initially sceptical of the author’s journalist credentials, assuming her treatment would amount to lots of testimonials and surface commentary: pop psychology rather than theory. Boy was I wrong. Despite her conversational tone and sometime confessional approach, I was amazed by the depth and breadth of her analysis. This is independent scholarship at its best: Free of academic jargon and ideological conceits, Stephanie Golden manages not only to assemble a remarkable amount of research but to tease out some fascinating insights as to how the concept of sacrifice mediates the female experience of and engagement with the world.

What I found particularly impressive was her multi-faceted and multi-layered approach. Remaining sensitive throughout to how (self-)sacrifice is internalized and manifests itself across cultural, racial and generational divides Golden draws on sources as varied as history, mythology, religious iconography, analytic psychology, biology and personal interviews, weaving what begin as disparate, seemingly unconnected strands into a seamless whole by the book’s end.

Although she strongly disputes essentialist theories about women’s innate masochism, this book is not a polemic. Rather, it is an uncommonly sensitive and sensible exploration of how women’s lives tend to be marked by self-denial and the ease with which we, often against our own best interests, put others’ needs and desires ahead of our own. ( )