A hundred years ago, women were lacing themselves into corsets and teaching their daughters to do the same. The ideal of the day, however, was inner beauty: a focus on good deeds and a pure heart. Today American women have more social...

Traces the century-old juvenile murder case of fifteen-year-old Charles Miller, citing such factors as his orphaned state at the age of six, his inability to find a safe home, the influences of poverty and abuse that led to his murder of...

Winner of four major awards, this updated edition of Joan Jacobs Brumberg's Fasting Girls, presents a history of women's food-refusal dating back as far as the sixteenth century. Here is a tableau of female self-denial: medieval martyrs...