What makes a great team? Sports journalist Peggy Shinn answers this question in her enthralling account of the dramatic rise of the U.S. women's cross-country ski team, winners of eight medals at three world championships over the past five years. Shinn's story - based on dozens of interviews with athletes, coaches, parents, spouses, and friends - paints a vivid picture of the obstacles that America's female athletes must overcome not just to ski with the world's best, but to beat them. In a sport where U.S. women have toiled for decades, mostly in the middle or the back of the pack, the development of a world-class team attests to the heady combination of a transformational leader, a coach who connects with his athletes, the super-fast individual skiers who are also conscientious teammates - and a bit of good luck. This is the story of Kikkan Randall, Liz Stephen, Holly Brooks, Jessie Diggins, Ida Sargent, Sadie Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell, Rosie Brennan, and coach Matt Whitcomb - and how they created the perfect team.

When Sharon Hanley Disher entered the U.S. Naval Academy with eighty other young women in 1976, she helped end a 131-year all-male tradition at Annapolis. Her entertaining and shocking account of the women's four-year effort to join the academy's elite fraternity and become commissioned naval officers is a valuable chronicle of the times, and her insights have been credited with helping us understand the challenges of integrating women into the military services. From the punishing crucible of plebe summer to the triumph of graduation, she describes their search for ways to survive the mental and physical hurdles they had to overcome. Unflinchingly frank, she freely discusses the prejudice and abuse they encountered that often went unpunished or unreported. A loyal Navy supporter, nevertheless, Disher provides a balanced account of life behind the academy's storied walls for that first group of teenaged women who charted the way for future female midshipmen. Lively, well researched, and amazingly good humored, the book seems as fresh today as it was when first published in hardcover in 1998.

“An upbeat chronicle of [Clavel’s] children’s school experiences in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo…[offering] advice about vetting schools and enriching children’s education.” —Kirkus Reviews “An intriguing volume on the differences in global education.” —Library Journal A must-read firsthand exploration of why Asian students are outpacing their American counterparts and how to help our children excel in today’s competitive world. When Teru Clavel had young children, she watched her friends and fellow parents vie for spots in elite New York City schools. Instead of losing herself in the intensive applications and interview process, Teru and her family moved to Asia, embarking on a decade-long journey through the public schools of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo. These schools were low-tech and bare-bones, with teachers who demanded obedience and order. In Hong Kong, her children’s school was nicknamed The Prison for its foreboding facilities, yet her three-year-old loved his teachers and his nightly homework. In Tokyo, the students were responsible for school chores, like preparing and serving school lunches. Yet Teru was amazed to discover that her children thrived in these academically competitive cultures; they learned to be independent, self-confident, resilient, and, above all, they developed a deep love of learning. When the family returned to the States, the true culture shock came when the top schools could no longer keep up with her children. Written with warmth and humor, World Class is a compelling story about how to inspire children to thrive academically. “Studded with lists of useful tips about choosing schools and hiring tutors, for parents who must advocate for their children and supplement gaps in their educations” (Publishers Weekly) and an insightful guide to set your children on a path towards lifelong success.

With a subtle yet penetrating understanding of the intricate interplay of gender, race, and class, Sheba George examines an unusual immigration pattern to analyze what happens when women who migrate before men become the breadwinners in the family. Focusing on a group of female nurses who moved from India to the United States before their husbands, she shows that this story of economic mobility and professional achievement conceals underlying conditions of upheaval not only in the families and immigrant community but also in the sending community in India. This richly textured and impeccably researched study deftly illustrates the complex reconfigurations of gender and class relations concealed behind a quintessential American success story. When Women Come First explains how men who lost social status in the immigration process attempted to reclaim ground by creating new roles for themselves in their church. Ironically, they were stigmatized by other upper class immigrants as men who needed to "play in the church" because the "nurses were the bosses" in their homes. At the same time, the nurses were stigmatized as lower class, sexually loose women with too much independence. George's absorbing story of how these women and men negotiate this complicated network provides a groundbreaking perspective on the shifting interactions of two nations and two cultures.

In this ethnographic examination of Mexican-American and white girls coming of age in California’s Central Valley, Julie Bettie turns class theory on its head, asking what cultural gestures are involved in the performance of class, and how class subjectivity is constructed in relationship to color, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. A new introduction contextualizes the book for the contemporary moment and situates it within current directions in cultural theory. Investigating the cultural politics of how inequalities are both reproduced and challenged, Bettie examines the discursive formations that provide a context for the complex identity performances of contemporary girls. The book’s title refers at once to young working-class women who have little cultural capital to enable class mobility; to the fact that analyses of class too often remain insufficiently transformed by feminist, ethnic, and queer studies; and to the failure of some feminist theory itself to theorize women as class subjects. Women without Class makes a case for analytical and political attention to class, but not at the expense of attention to other social formations.

Although conditions have vastly improved since the days of sweatshops, the working woman is still likely to be underpaid, overworked, and without adequate resources. In Urban Survival eight working-class women of different ages and races speak with pride and independence about their daily reality, their hopes and fears. Ruth Sidel’s new introduction shows that although she interviewed the women in the late seventies, their concerns are still current. Now, as then, the working woman worries about obtaining needed childcare, healthcare, and social services; about being the last hired and first fired; about welfare, drugs, and violence. The oral histories in Urban Survival reveal a vivid picture of the struggle for survival in today’s cities.