Great investigative narratives written by women.
29 June 2016
I'm stealing that headline from a Booklist article titled "What She Knows: Great Investigative Narratives Written by Women." I like the title; I like the article; I LOVE investigative works (you'll notice, please, I have a tag for "investigative" over in the right sidebar--that will take you to my reviews of investigative works), either by women or not. And I cannot resist a challenge. Booklist gave up five titles, including Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family (two of my favorites), so how many can I list? Go!
Rebecca Traister's All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time
Jennifer Senior's All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
Helaine Olen's Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry
Rose George, Ninety Percent of Everything and The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters*
Jeanne Marie Laskas's Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work
Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why and The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way
Emily Oster's Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong-And What You Really Need to Know
Really, Booklist? You forgot Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea?
Barbara Ehrenreich's now-classic Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America
Ten titles, without even breathing hard. Suck it, Booklist.
(Although, in all fairness, I too noticed a while back that I have a hard time finding investigative books that I enjoy that are written by women. If they're all being marketed as memoirs, as the Booklist article suggests, that might at least explain a bit of that. And hey--if you click on the link above, you'll find a lot of other great women investigative writers listed in the comments. You commenters are so great, and you know your stuff!)
*This book is so good. If you read only one title on this list, make it this one.