Juanita Phillips, ABC Books ($35.00)

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Juanita Phillips thinks that we have been hoodwinked into thinking we can have it all. She had a glamorous job as a television presenter, two gorgeous children and a big house. Admittedly free time was non-existent. She was working two jobs and seeing her husband for five minutes a day when they played tag to look after the children. It took a very public collapse in front of half a million viewers (which continues to be enjoyed on You Tube) for her to realise that she needed to do something about her work/life balance. Her book details the things that worked for her after she crashed and burned.

The first thing she had to do was to stop pretending that she was perfect and realise that all those celebrity mothers in the magazines lied. She looks at the history of housework and the increasing demand for today’s Australian families to juggle so many demands; the implications of role reversal in the home and how to squeeze, block and shift time to make more of it.

Phillips still presents the ABC news in Sydney and maintains that the best way for busy people to produce large quantities of healthy, home-cooked food so that they never have to buy takeaway is to invest in a pressure cooker. So, even though she admits she is not a great cook, she shares her favourite recipes and the mistakes she has made along the way so that you too can have a calmer, simpler, healthier lifestyle.

Lezly Herbert

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women

Leila J. Rupp, New York University Press ($46.95)

This book is a huge undertaking. Leila Rupp, who is professor of feminist studies at the University of California, hunted down the histories and stories of female same-sex desire, love and sexuality, from every part of the world for as far back as she could go. She starts with an imagined prehistory of women-only societies as described in literature around the world. She looks at ancient societies of the Aztec, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Incan and Roman civilizations who valued rather than feared sexuality and looks into sex-segregated places such as monasteries and polygamous households. Her search uncovers cross-gender practices in Africa, North America, India and New Zealand and she blows the lid on romantic friendships across Europe and America.

Of course, societal ignorance and disbelief in the possibility of sexual relationships between women has meant that there is not as much information as there is on male same-sex relationships. Rupp looks at the definitions that have saught to confine women and ludicrous claims made by male sexologists who seem to be groping around in the dark! She has done a wonderful job in piecing together fragments of evidence and making connections that might not otherwise be apparent. Her task is made much easier when relationships between women became more visible and females could write about the possibilities in women’s lives. This is a great compendium on ‘the wide variety of ways that women have desired, loved and made love to other women throughout time and around the globe’.

Lezly Herbert