Best Selling Books by Germaine Greer

Thirty years after the publication of The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer is back with the sequel she vowed never to write. "A marvelous performance--. No feminist writer can match her for eloquence or energy; none makes [us] laugh the way she does."--The Washington Post In this thoroughly engaging new book, the fervent, rollicking, straight-shooting Greer, is, as ever, "the ultimate agent provocateur" (Mirabella). With passionate rhetoric, outrageous humor, and the authority of a lifetime of thought and observation, she trains a sharp eye on the issues women face at the turn of the century. From the workplace to the kitchen, from the supermarket to the bedroom, Greer exposes the innumerable forms of insidious discrimination and exploitation that continue to plague women around the globe. She mordantly attacks "lifestyle feminists" who blithely believe they can have it all, and argues for a fuller, more organic idea of womanhood. Whether it''s liposuction or abortion, Barbie or Lady Diana, housework or sex work, Greer always has an opinion, and as one of the most brilliant, glamorous, and dynamic feminists of all time, her opinions matter. For anyone interested in the future of womanhood, The Whole Woman is a must-read.

The beauty of male imagery as an object of female desire has been repressed, argues feminist writer Greer in this work of art history. She includes some 200 images from Western art in her exploration of the shifting meanings and presentations of masculinity.

A clear introduction to Shakespeare''s plays, this volume examines them in detail and shows how Shakespeare dramatized moral and intellectual issues in such a way that his audience became dazzlingly aware of an imaginative dimension to daily life. Germaine Greer argues that as long as Shakespeare''s work remains central to English cultural life, it will retain the values which make it unique in the world.

The publication of Germaine Greer''s The Female Eunuch in 1970 was a landmark event, raising eyebrows and ire while creating a shock wave of recognition in women around the world with its steadfast assertion that sexual liberation is the key to women''s liberation. Today, Greer''s searing examination of the oppression of women in contemporary society is both an important historical record of where we''ve been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.

It''s time to rethink rape. Centuries of different approaches to rape - as inflicted by men on women - have got us nowhere. Rape statistics remain intractable: one woman in five will experience sexual violence. Very few rapes find their way into court. The crucial issue is consent, thought by some to be easy to establish and by others impossible. Sexual assault does not diminish; relations between the sexes do not improve; litigation balloons. In ON RAPE Germaine Greer argues there has to be a better way.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A polemical, ground-breaking study of Elizabethan England that reclaims Ann Hathaway’s rightful place in history. Little is known about the wife of the world’s most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare’s will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself. Yet Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage. Before him, there were few comedies or tragedies about wooing or wedding. And yet he explored the sacrament in all its aspects, spiritual, psychological, sexual, sociological, and was the creator of some of the most tenacious and intelligent heroines in English literature. Is it possible, therefore, that Ann, who has been mocked and vilified by scholars for centuries, was the inspiration? Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the life and career of the farmer’s daughter who married England’s greatest poet. Part biography, part history, Shakespeare’s Wife is a fascinating reconstruction of Ann’s life, and an illuminating look at the daily lives of Elizabethan women, from their working routines to the rituals of courtship and the minutiae of married life. In this thoroughly researched and controversial book, Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new questions, and begins to right the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.

Conventional wisdom has it that in visual culture the female body, not the male, is viewed as the primary object of desire. Germaine Greer argues that until the nineteenth century the image of the female body was not drawn from life but constructed on aesthetic principles. The naked body that was instead studied and portrayed with heart-stopping immediacy in hundreds of guises, most of them to some extent erotic, some of them sadistic, is that of the boy. In exploring the iconic ideal of the beautiful boy, Germaine Greer demolishes one of the last Western taboos. With over two hundred images drawn from the whole history of Western art, illustrating the vicissitudes of the beautiful male - as toy boy, virgin soldier, naked martyr or winged genius, angel or seducer, narcissist or worshipper - they are invited to appreciate boys in all their sensuality, spontaneity and vulnerability.

“Ferocious psychic need and volcanic energy drive this combined memoir, detective story and travelogue” from the author of The Female Eunuch (The New Yorker). After her father died, influential feminist writer and public intellectual Germaine Greer realizes how little she knows about him. She decides to track the life of her father, an Australian intelligence officer during World War II, to uncover the roots of his secrecy and distance. As she painstakingly assembles the jigsaw pieces of the past, Greer discovers surprising secrets about her father, her family, and herself. During her three-year quest, Greer travels from England to Australia, Tasmania, India, and Malta; searches through scores of genealogical, civil, and military archives; and delves into the memories of the men and women who may—or may not—have known Reg Greer. Yet the heart of her “lyrical but brutal elegy” is her own emotional journey, as the startling facts behind her father’s façade force her to painfully examine her own notions of truth and loyalty, family and obligation (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “Anyone who has done this kind of search will identify with Ms. Greer’s frustration, admire her persistence, laugh at her accuracy and rejoice in her discoveries.” —The New York Times Book Review “The deeply affecting climax is a remarkable feat of family reconstruction.” —Publishers Weekly

''A brilliant, gutsy, exhilarating, exasperating fury of a book'' New York Times ''Germaine Greer has given women just the book they need for this time of their lives. Read it, pass it on, talk about it, disagree with it, keep the circle going'' Washington Post The seminal, ground-breaking and controversial feminist text on the menopause, revised and updated When The Change was published in 1991, ''menopause'' was a word of fear. Then, as now, expensive magazines advertised even more expensive anti-ageing preparations, none of which worked. Big pharma was pushing replacement hormones, but doctors were dragging their feet. Some women told horror stories of their experiences with replacement hormones; others called them lifesavers. Nobody knew why some women went through this change of life without difficulty. What was working for them, when other women were tormented almost to madness? It seemed that we were close to an answer to that question, but that was before large-scale studies revealed that the protective effects of hormone replacement had been vastly exaggerated; given the perceived increase in the risk of life-threatening disease, the studies had to be called off. Now more than ever, amid the clamour of online chatrooms and promotions for a vast array of alternative therapies, the individual woman has to manage her passage through menopause for herself. In The Change, Germaine Greer provides a common-sense guide to a very interesting and important stage of women''s lives.

If men and women are equally capable of genius, why have there been no female artists of the stature of Leonardo, Titian or Poussin? In seeking to answer this question, Germaine Greer introduces us to major but underestimated figures in the history of Western painting--Angelica Kauffmann, Natalia Goncharova, Suzanne Valadon, Berthe Morisot, Kathe Köllwitz--and produces a brilliantly incisive and richly illustrated study. She explains the obstacles as both external and surmountable and internal and insurmountable in the race for achievement.

For years I had wandered Australia with an aching heart. Everywhere I had ever travelled across the vast expanse of the fabulous country where I was born I had seen devastation, denuded hills, eroded slopes, weeds from all over the world, feral animals, open-cut mines as big as cities, salt rivers, salt earth, abandoned townships, whole beaches made of beer cans... One bright day in December 2001, sixty-two-year-old Germaine Greer found herself confronted by an irresistible challenge in the shape of sixty hectares of dairy farm, one of many in south-east Queensland that, after a century of logging, clearing and downright devastation, had been abandoned to their fate. She didn''t think for a minute that by restoring the land she was saving the world. She was in search of heart''s ease. Beyond the acres of exotic pasture grass and soft weed and the impenetrable curtains of tangled Lantana canes there were Macadamias dangling their strings of unripe nuts, and Black Beans with red and yellow pea flowers growing on their branches ... and the few remaining White Beeches, stupendous trees up to forty metres in height, logged out within forty years of the arrival of the first white settlers. To have turned down even a faint chance of bringing them back to their old haunts would have been to succumb to despair. Once the process of rehabilitation had begun, the chance proved to be a dead certainty. When the first replanting shot up to make a forest and rare caterpillars turned up to feed on the leaves of the new young trees, she knew beyond doubt that at least here biodepletion could be reversed. Greer describes herself as an old dog who succeeded in learning a load of new tricks, inspired and rejuvenated by her passionate love of Australia and of Earth, most exuberant of small planets.

Always strong and fearless, Germaine Greer strikes right at the heart of the matter--be it John F. Kennedy and vaginal deodorants, rape and artificial insemination, cosmetic surgery, the death of Jimi Hendrix, or the famine in Ethiopia. This collection represents a mosaic of essays, long and short, some of which are appearing for the first time in print and all of which chafe the conventional and are bristling with argument. From the youthful liveliness of her sixties pieces, which "got up everybody''s nose," to the depth and complexity of her later work, The Madwoman''s Underclothes is a reflection both of an era and of the changing ideas and styles of Germaine Greer: "The essays on Brazil, Cuba, and Ethiopia represent my coming of age. Something like a coherent system of values is beginning to emerge after my years of wandering, although I have certainly not arrived at a set of articles of faith, and never will, I hope." Greer''s opinions on social, political, and sexual trends and mores are tendered in her unique fashion--outspoken, with rapier wit and no tolerance for narrow-mindedness. But as explosive, angry, and often funny as these essays are, they also reveal tenderness and sadness and that emotion that underlies all of Greer''s work--passionate commitment.

ON RAGE is Germaine Greer''s timeless essay about Aboriginal dispossession. With characteristic acuity and passion, Greer looks to the causes of rage and its consequences in Indigenous Australians. Originally published six months after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd''s Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008, this is an urgent and provocative examination of disempowerment by one of Australia''s leading polemicists.

Premiered in London last year to critical acclaim, Aristophanes'' classic battle of the sexes is given an up-to-the-minute plundering by the world''s leading feminist raconteur, polemicist and wit. "Germaine Greer''s ball-grabbing translation misses no opportunity to squeeze as fruity an interpretation as possible. A bubbling bag of Ancient Greek delights."--Rachel Halliburton, The Independent

The author examines customs and attitudes toward fertility, chastity, promiscuity, abortion, contraception, and infanticide.

In the thirdQuarterly Essayof 2003, Germaine Greer suggests that embracing Aboriginality is the only way Australia can fully imagine itself as a nation. In a wide-ranging essay she looks at the interdependence of black and white and suggests not how the Aborigine question may be settled but how a sense of being Aboriginal might save the soul of Australia. In a sweeping and magisterial essay, touching on everything from Henry Lawson to multiculturalism, Germaine Greer argues that Australia must enter the Aboriginal web of dreams. '' Whitefella Jump Upis an essay about sitting down and thinking where all the politics start and what kind of legend Australia wants to place at its heart.'' - Peter Craven ''I''m not here offering yet a solution to the Aborigine problem ... Blackfellas are not and never were the problem. They were the solution, if only whitefellas had been able to see it.'' - Germaine Greer, Whitefella Jump Up

"Based in part on a previously published work, this book takes the theme of women and literature and looks at the woman poet." - COPAC.

A guidebook to this multi-faceted artist and her allusive work.

Written by a renowned scholar and broadcaster, this account of Wilmot''s work strives to place it in its socio-political context and describe the way the poet and his work were co-opted after his premature death to serve contrasting political agendas.

An anthology of women''s literary activity with the work of some forty-five poets.

Balans van de ontwikkeling van het feminisme in de jaren sinds 1970, waarbij wordt gesteld dat de strijd voor vrijheid voor de vrouw is vervangen door het streven naar gelijkheid met de man en de ontkenning en onderwaardering van het vrouwelijke.