PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Kristen R. Ghodsee was travelling in Europe, and spent the summer of 1990 witnessing first-hand the initial hope and euphoria that followed the sudden and unexpected collapse of state socialism in the former Eastern Bloc. The political and economic chaos that followed inspired Ghodsee to pursue an academic career studying this upheaval, focusing on how ordinary people's lives - and women's particularly - changed when state socialism gave way to capitalism. For the last two decades, she has visited the region regularly and lived for over three years in Bulgaria and the Eastern parts of reunified Germany. Now a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, she has won many awards for her work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has written six books on gender, socialism, and postsocialism, examining the everyday experiences of upheaval and displacement that continue to haunt the region to this day. Ghodsee also writes on women's issues for the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the co-author of Professor Mommy- Finding Work/Family Balance in Academia. Her articles and essays have appeared in publications such as Eurozine, Aeon, Dissent, Foreign Affairs and The New York Times.
History is made by the dreamers ... A must-read -- THOMAS PIKETTY, author of A Brief History of Equality Just wonderful -- ANGELA SAINI, author of The Patriarchs This warm, intelligent and lucid book takes us on a deep dive into how people have created better systems for living – systems that actually work -- ROBERT WALDINGER, author of The Good Life and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development Exhilarating. A powerful reminder that dreaming of better worlds is not just some fantastical project but also a very serious political one -- REBECCA TRAISTER, author of Good and Mad Kristen Ghodsee is back with another splendid insight: utopia can and ought to be an everyday thing. In every home. Invigorating writing for a cheerless era -- YANIS VAROUFAKIS, author of Technofeudalism
