Amazon.com (ISBN 0684834421, Hardcover)

In this stirring rebuke to the doomsday writings of feminist authors such as Susan Faludi (Backlash), Cathy Young provides a commonsense approach to resolving the political and personal war between the sexes. There is no "war against women," proclaims Young, who smartly rebuts the phony scholarship of advocacy groups on a series of controversial issues, from the incidence of domestic violence (not as frequent as you might think) to the wage gap (much smaller than you've been told). Young's intelligent handling of this data--the strongest aspect of the book--allows her to advance dozens of contrarian ideas. Although many of her targets are on the political left, she certainly is no right-winger. In fact, Young embraces many aspects of the sexual revolution, and devotes an entire chapter to attacking conservative authors such as George Gilder and F. Carolyn Graglia for their views on gender. In the final chapter of Ceasefire, Young offers a series of proposals for de-escalating the gender wars: don't assume sexism is the root cause of all women's problems, rewrite sexual harassment law, demand that husbands and wives serve as equal parents, and so on. Many readers will haggle with Young over several of her interpretations, but by book's end she probably will have them on her side. A well-argued and carefully reasoned polemic. --John J. Miller