By Susan Squire
272 pages; Bloomsbury

Authority is one thing; power is something else again. The battle of the sexes has been going strong for the last, oh, 10,000 years, and marriage has only escalated it. Susan Squire archly reconsiders the disobedient biblical helpmeet Eve ("Shouldn't this buck stop with the senior officer, not the assistant?"), as well as witches, bitches, nymphomaniacs, concubines, clerics, cuckolds, and others in I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage (Bloomsbury). Take this potent, hugely entertaining book to bed.

— Cathleen Medwick