Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America, edited by Vivyan C. Adair and Sandra L. Dahlber (Temple University Press, 2003)

Through the essays of twelve female scholars, Reclaiming Class offers an analysis of the role class plays in American society and the contradiction of meritocracy. The authors, poor as children, followed the pathway of education to change their lives and become members of the scholastic world. Individually, they explore the philosophy of the welfare system and the potential to secure autonomy, while demonstrating through first-hand experiences the failures of the programs intended to reduce poverty and educational inequalities. The editors have divided Reclaiming Class into three parts: "Educators Remember," "On the Front Lines," and "Policy, Research, and Poor Women." The first section describes the memories of female academics who felt the veiled paradoxes of education while growing up. In the second segment, students present their experiences in higher education and point to ways that race and socio-economic stigmas prolong their poverty. The final group of essays presents a look at welfare and financial aid guidelines through the eyes of those who are most affected by them. Collectively, these essays present a combination of personal, theoretical, and analytical approaches to understanding and evaluating higher education policies. $22.95 paper. (Temple University Press, 1601 N. Broad Street, USB 305, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6099; www.temple.edu/tempress)

Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon, Leslie Heywood and Shari L. Dworkin (University of Minnesota Press, 2003)

Over the past decade, the image of the powerful and capable female athlete has pervaded popular culture in the United States. Through films, ad campaigns, and interviews with elementary and high school-age boys and girls, Heywood and Dworkin examine contemporary perceptions of the female athlete. They also examine the cultural climate of the 1990s that encouraged the popularization of female sports figures after so many decades of invisibility in the twentieth century. Built to Win goes beyond simply explaining the emergence of the female athlete. It considers what sport's impact will be on women's self-image and perceptions of femininity and whether the respect and admiration of female athletes will positively affect the way gender and influence are created and perceived. $19.95 paper. (University of Minnesota Press, 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290. Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520; www.upress.umn.edu)

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs, Jonathan Michel Metzl (Duke University Press, 2003)

Metzl examines the cultural history of remedies for anxiety, depression, and other mental sicknesses targeted at female consumers and maps out the way gender roles have shaped perceptions of psychiatric wonder drugs and turned these drugs into cultural symbols. Through the analysis of articles and advertisements for psychotropic drugs in medical and psychiatric journals, as well as popular magazines, he provides insight into the popular and professional responses to psychiatric treatments. Metzl uses Miltown, Valium, and Prozac as his center-stone examples to examine the history of gender roles and their continuous effect on the prescription of "wonder drugs" to women. Although the author claims that the era of Freudian psychoanalysis is over, Metzl finds a connection between prescribing of drugs to the female population and the Freudian philosophy about women, arguing that the modern record of psychiatric treatments reveals a "Freud of Prozac" notion, rather than a shift from Freud to Prozac. $24.95 cloth. (Duke University Press, Box 90660, Durham, NC 27708-0660; www.dukeupress.edu)