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In these four artfully crafted essays, Patrick Geary explores the way ancient and medieval authors wrote about women. Geary describes the often marginal role women played in origin legends from antiquity until the twelfth century. Not confining himself to one religious tradition or region, he probes the tensions between women in biblical, classical, and medieval myths (such as Eve, Mary, Amazons, princesses, and countesses), and actual women in ancient and medieval societies. Using these legends as a lens through which to study patriarchal societies, Geary chooses moments and texts that illustrate how ancient authors (all of whom were male) confronted the place of women in their society. Unlike other books on the subject, Women at the Beginning attempts to understand not only the place of women in these legends, but also the ideologies of the men who wrote about them. The book concludes that the authors of these stories were themselves struggling with ambivalence about women in their own worlds and that this struggle manifested itself in their writings.

Winstead reviews The Books and the Life of Judith of Flanders by Mary Dockray-Miller.

While the idea of \"home\" remains constant -- the epitome of the familiar and reliable -- actual home life is messier and changes all the time. So says Judith Flanders, author of \"The Making of Home: The 500-Year Story of How Our Houses Became Our Homes\" (Thomas Dunne Books, September 2015), in which she traces the evolution of the home, and concepts of home, in northern Europe and America from the 16th century to the early 20th century. For instance, while some might think that families and marriages used to be more stable, \"broken homes were the absolute norm in most of history,\" she says. \"A home can't be any more broken than if one parent is dead.\" \"The reason the idea of 'home' survives is because it's so fluid that it can encompass rapidly changing social customs,\" says Flanders. \"It's a nice warm quilt to wrap ourselves in to keep out the cold that's outside.\"

The origins of the word \"home\" are ancient, denoting \" both a place and an attitude \". Historian Judith Flanders traces the economic, architectural, cultural and technological changes that have shaped our idea of home across 500 years.

Judith Flanders's book views the making of \"home\" from the vantage point of historical anthropology, looking at myths and rituals, marriage practices and the material fashioning of houses as homes. Its sweep is impressive, from the 16th century into the 20th. Her focus is on those countries that have words that distinguish house and home. For Flanders, these are the \"home countries\" (the Netherlands, North America, Germany, Britain), places that have all, over the centuries, developed a particular attachment to the home as a cosy respite from an aggressive world.