Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2022 -

Garcia (Yale Univ.) has written a thought-provoking volume about patriarchy and women's lives, focusing on heterosexual relationships in the US and France. As she expresses from the outset, "the ambition of this book is to study, without preconceptions, the submission women experience, how it manifests itself, how it is lived, and how it can be explained" (p. 20). A work of philosophy, the study "progresses through a close reading of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex" (p. 20). Over nine chapters, readers consider Garcia's questions alongside de Beauvoir's writing from 1949. While this book makes a substantial contribution to philosophy, readers from other disciplines may struggle to find resonance with their own work through the text. Still, it is an important contribution that tackles female submission with fresh eyes and presents a renewed look at de Beauvoir's analyses, especially around consent. As Garcia astutely pinpoints, "one of the great enemies of an equal concord between men, women, and all the people who do not identify with this binarity is women's consent to their own submission" (p. 206). This book is an essential addition to research libraries.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

In this inspired collection Dyck (Western Univ., Canada) has collected essays on Sophie of Hanover, Johanna Unzer, and Maria von Herbert and on topics ranging from "challenges of female authorship and identity" to the German enlightenment, bringing to light important scholarship on neglected philosophies. The importance of this volume cannot be overstated for philosophy programs and philosophers interested in updating traditional courses. The book is challenging, insightful, and should be required reading alongside the philosophies of Leibniz, Kant, and other male philosophers in order to gain a better understanding of the period.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.