SOURCE: Lehrman, Karen. “Women's Hour.” New Republic (14 March 1994): 40–45.

In the following review of Fire with Fire, Lehrman finds flaws in Wolf's contradictory feminist positions and trivial self-help pragmatism.

Underlying nearly all the commentary on relations between the sexes these days is the notion that we have entered a period of unprecedented contradiction and confusion. A president devoted to equal rights for women now resides in the White House, along side a First Lady who seems to personify those rights; twenty-eight new female members of Congress have helped press legislation concerning women's health and family issues that had been languishing for years; and in the corporate world, women have been steadily amassing in numbers and rising in status. Meanwhile, what is variously called a gender war, a war against women or a war against masculinity, is supposed to be raging. Issues such as sexual harassment and date rape are...