The Myth of Matriarchal Pre-History: Why a Manufactured Past Won’t Give Women a Future

By Cynthia Eller
This fascinating book painstakingly skewers all the hogwash matriarchalist feminists and matriarchalist pagans have been pushing for ages. In short, the old time when all the world was run by women and everything was peace and harmony until those nasty patriarchal invaders showed up and ruined it all never existed.
This is a thoroughly scholarly work, to the point of being very difficult to read. This is actually my second time through it and I’m still not sure I got everything. Still, her writing style is engaging and has a strong thread of dry wit under all the complexity and I enjoyed reading it both times (especially once I started using two bookmarks – one for my place in the narrative and one for my place in the endnotes).
Book 19 in 2007.