Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hard Bargains: The Politics of Sex | 1997 | Linda R. Hirshman | Buy |
| 2 | A Woman’s Guide to Law School | 1999 | Linda R. Hirshman | Buy |
| 3 | Get to Work: . . . And Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late | 2006 | Linda R. Hirshman | Buy |
| 4 | Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution | 2012 | Linda R. Hirshman | Buy |
| 5 | Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World | 2015 | Linda R. Hirshman | Buy |
| 6 | Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment | 2019 | Linda R. Hirshman | Buy |
| 7 | The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation | 2022 | Linda R. Hirshman | Buy |
Linda R. Hirshman’s nonfiction output spans 25 years and covers several overlapping areas: the legal treatment of gender and sexuality, the history of civil rights movements, and the specific trajectories of women within male-dominated institutions. Hard Bargains (1997) and A Woman’s Guide to Law School (1999) came from her years in legal academia and reflect that institutional vantage point. They are more narrowly scoped than her later books but lay out the analytical framework she would apply on a larger canvas.
Get to Work (2006) is the book that defined her public persona, making a deliberately uncomfortable case against professional women choosing domesticity over career. Whatever one makes of the argument, the book generated serious debate and demonstrated Hirshman’s willingness to stake out unpopular positions and defend them. Victory (2012) brought her same confrontational clarity to the history of the LGBT civil rights movement, reconstructing the legal and political strategies that produced marriage equality and other legislative gains.
Sisters in Law (2015) is probably her most accessible book for general readers — a narrative dual biography that follows Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg from their parallel experiences of being turned away from jobs despite finishing at the top of their law school classes through their years together on the Supreme Court. Reckoning (2019) and The Color of Abolition (2022) continue her work on the history of American social reform, examining how legal and political change actually happens and who does the work to make it possible.