cheryl6of8's review against another edition
4.0
This has been on my bookshelf for a while now and I keep meaning to read it. Since Hillary Clinton (mentioned in the Afterword entitled "Now We are Thirteen") will be the Democratic candidate for president this year and there are 20 women currently in the Senate and Barbara Mikulsky will be retiring after being the mentor to all of them, it seemed a good time. Plus the reading theme for this month is numbers.
Such a good read -- full of fascinating history and refreshing in its lack of partisan squabbling -- and very encouraging in some ways. There is a good discussion of how women made being excluded from the good old boy clubs of all male lawfirms and golf clubs work for them by using their organizational skills and social network. There was a great deal of information on how to be an effective leader in an inefficient and ineffective work place. And there were great stories that really should be more widely known. I have lived in Maryland for 7 years, represented by Barbara Mikulsky, and yet knew next to nothing about her back story. I lived in Washington state and heard Patty Murray referred to as the "mom in tennis shoes" without knowing that back story (when she went to Olympia to rally support for a program she believed in, a state politician dismissed her as a nobody with no chance of success, just a "mom in tennis shoes.") I knew Dianne Feinstein had been mayor of San Francisco, but had no idea she got the job because she was 3rd in line when Mayor George Muscone and Harvey Milk were assassinated, or that she was just feet away when it happened. A very enlightening and grounding work of political and feminist thought.
Such a good read -- full of fascinating history and refreshing in its lack of partisan squabbling -- and very encouraging in some ways. There is a good discussion of how women made being excluded from the good old boy clubs of all male lawfirms and golf clubs work for them by using their organizational skills and social network. There was a great deal of information on how to be an effective leader in an inefficient and ineffective work place. And there were great stories that really should be more widely known. I have lived in Maryland for 7 years, represented by Barbara Mikulsky, and yet knew next to nothing about her back story. I lived in Washington state and heard Patty Murray referred to as the "mom in tennis shoes" without knowing that back story (when she went to Olympia to rally support for a program she believed in, a state politician dismissed her as a nobody with no chance of success, just a "mom in tennis shoes.") I knew Dianne Feinstein had been mayor of San Francisco, but had no idea she got the job because she was 3rd in line when Mayor George Muscone and Harvey Milk were assassinated, or that she was just feet away when it happened. A very enlightening and grounding work of political and feminist thought.
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