Summary

In “80 Books No Woman Should Read,” Solnit makes a polemical and humorous critique against a list titled “The 80 Best Books Every Man Should Read” in Esquire magazine. With 79 titles out of 80 authored by men and such clearly misogynistic annotations for each as “She would of been a good woman… if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” for Flannery O’Connor, the one woman on the list, and “Because it’s all about the titty” for John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, it seems to be specifically a list of what men should read to be men – in a very limited, patriarchal sense. Solnit finds furthermore that the large number of books glorifying war and violence may provide a clue for why contemporary society suffers from so many...