Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

The author investigates the most vital component of a healthy personality–self-esteem–drawing on her own experience of low self-esteem and that of such luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi

Features

• One of the founding mothers of contemporary feminism has written a self-help book that utterly transcends the genre. In lucid prose that is by turns brave and funny and tender, Steinem takes us on a journey of circles and spirals because, as she says, “If we think of ourselves as circles, our goal is completion . . . if we think of work structures as circles . . . progress means mutual support and connectedness.” Drawing from sources that range from Margaret Mead to Chief Seattle (Sealth), from Alice Walker to the Upanishads, as well as from her own life and the lives of her friends and colleagues, she provides a series of pathways to self-esteem. Steinem’s book unfolds like a flower: it offers literature, art, nature, meditation, and connectedness as ways of finding and exploring the self. Her message is that it is our very selves that we need to trust, despite educational and societal pressures that may denigrate the female experience. Her focus is women, but she is clear that what she has to say is for men, too, and she is neither strident nor dismissive. Recommended for all collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/91.