He Said What?: Women Write About Moments When Everything Changed, edited by Victoria Zackheim. Seal Press (April 26, 2011). Essay. Paperback: 296 pages

I read through most of these essays nodding in agreement or laughing along with the author. Editor Victoria Zackheim pulled together 25 talented writers for this anthology about the good and bad men things have said that turned into a life-changing moment for these women. Dianne Rinehart, in “Full Condom,” illustrates the hypocrisy of covering a United Nations Conference on Women’s Rights in Beijing when China stifles women. Adored “Too Much Testosterone or a Gradual Persuasion” by Mary Pols who states: “A heterosexual woman in her midforties who’s never been married? Naturally, she has some indignation in her past, some bitter things she could dwell on.” In “Crazy,” Barbara Abercrombie deftly writes about the end of her 25-year-long marriage. “We worked out roles for ourselves: I was creative and dramatic, and he was solid and conservative, a man who went off to work every day as a stockbroker, who worked long hours and was steady and firm as a rock. I could act out—he grounded me,” she writes. Kathi Kamen Goldmark elucidates the down and dirty aspect of being a rocker’s girlfriend in “Dr. Feelgood in the Snail Garden.” It’s a collection well worth checking out.