From Publishers Weekly
Williamson ( A Return to Love ) here tells women that they are goddesses with cosmic functions. A weakness: she often lets women hear what they want to hear--how "special" they are, how beautiful, how close to nature. When she draws from her own experience, Williamson gives sound, empowering advice on relationships, work, love, sex and childrearing. Still, her soft focus on the so-called feminine virtues, including that of assuming the submissive role during sex, often seems reactionary and contradictory, as when she argues that women were meant to be passive, but later claims that woman should assert their power. This mix of the mystical, the modern (Williamson says one of her old boyfriends left her for a "bimbo") and the Christian could be called visionary--but the combination doesn't always make sense, as in this statement: "Our Kingdom is our life and our life is our Kingdom. And we are all meant to rule from a glorious place." Author tour. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This is essentially a feel-good book, meant to inspire and empower women to take control over their lives and help return the world to the feminine qualities from which it has strayed. As in Williamson's best-selling first book, A Return to Love ( LJ 1/92), love is the key. Although Williamson's messsage is admirable--who among us is against the prospect of a world order based on love and understanding with an end to all that is antithetical?--many readers will be put off by the means she posits to that end. Most women do not think in terms of growth from girl to princess to queen to goddess. In addition, her assumption that all women intuitively know what is right is at best optimistic. This work could serve as a starting point for those who have difficulty approaching the concept of feminism. The success of Williamson's first book indicates New Age enthusiasts will be attracted here; aticipate demand where the first was popular. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/93.- Kathleen L. Atwood, Pomfret Sch. Lib., Ct.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
``In writing this book I have no purpose other than a creative spill of my own guts,'' proclaims Williamson at the start of these seven inspirational essays aimed at resurrecting the sacred feminine in today's women. Readers of the author's mega-selling A Return to Love (1992) know that her guts spill rather messily, the point of the effluence being not so much to inform through logic and hard data as to transport to new spiritual heights on a torrent of upbeat chit-chat. So, here, readers will find themselves responding--perhaps off the page but most certainly on (`` `What?' you say. `Me, a priestess?' '')--to Williamson's exhortations that they put aside the deadening constrictions of patriarchy and ``embark on a quest for our own enchantment.'' Williamson covers issues such as image, sex, gender-biased language, abortion, emotional masochism (``Yuk. How sick. Yet how familiar''), etc., all the while urging her ``girls'' to release their passions and to realize the ``power of our womanly knowingness'' as they meditate and pray to both ``God'' and ``the Goddess.'' (Williamson is, of course, a fervent student of the ``channeled'' mystical-religious teachings known as A Course in Miracles). It's a familiar yet enduringly potent message, delivered in frank, elbows-on-the-table style that's likely to see an extraordinary number of readers sharing the author's thoughts and then chanting, as she does, ``We are about to break free. We are about to be born. We have seen the shining. We have seen. We have seen.'' -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
With A WOMAN'S WORTH, Marianne Williamson turns her charismatic voice--and the same empowering, spiritually enlightening wisdom that energized her landmark work, A RETURN TO LOVE-- to exploring the crucial role of women in the world today. Drawing deeply and candidly on her own experiences, the author illuminates her thought-provoking positions on such issues as beauty and age, relationships and sex, children and careers, and the reassurance and reassertion of the feminine in a patriarchal society. Cutting across class, race, religion, and gender, A WOMAN'S WORTH speaks powerfully and persuasively to a generation in need of healing, and in search of harmony.



From the Inside Flap
With A WOMAN'S WORTH, Marianne Williamson turns her charismatic voice--and the same empowering, spiritually enlightening wisdom that energized her landmark work, A RETURN TO LOVE-- to exploring the crucial role of women in the world today. Drawing deeply and candidly on her own experiences, the author illuminates her thought-provoking positions on such issues as beauty and age, relationships and sex, children and careers, and the reassurance and reassertion of the feminine in a patriarchal society. Cutting across class, race, religion, and gender, A WOMAN'S WORTH speaks powerfully and persuasively to a generation in need of healing, and in search of harmony.

ANNOTATION

Cutting across class, race, religion, and gender, the author of A Return to Love and interpreter of the highly acclaimed Course in Miracles explores the crucial role of women today and the reassertion of the feminine in a patriarchal society.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For the past ten years, Marianne Williamson has lectured and led discussion groups across the United States and Europe. Her inspirational words have provided encouragement to thousands and brought solace to people with life-threatening illnesses. Frequently drawing on incidents from her own life, she has the extraordinary ability to reach women and men of all types. Young and old, rich and poor, healthy and infirm, housewives and career women, their husbands and lovers and children and parent - all have come to her with their frustrations and joys, for insights on spiritual wisdom and to share their experiences. At forty, Williamson is one of a generation of women who have been part of tremendous social upheavals and are now just beginning to fit the pieces together. Today women are confused. Some would like to have it all but are held back by their lack of either self-worth or a support system, as well as by historical prejudice. Others are afraid of asking for too much, afraid of losing love and respect if they appear too greedy. Williamson persuasively proposes that women must first examine their inner lives before going out to conquer the outer world. The first step is for women to find their spiritual home, religious or otherwise, the place where they know they are respected and admired. Throughout history, women have sublimated their own talents and needs to please a patriarchal society. Now it is time to value feminine qualities, to be proud of being a woman. In chapters devoted to beauty, age, relationships, sex, children, and careers, Williamson sends a strong message of empowerment to women of all ages. This is a comforting message for men as well. The reemergence of women will bring about the healing of the world.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Williamson ( A Return to Love ) here tells women that they are goddesses with cosmic functions. A weakness: she often lets women hear what they want to hear--how ``special'' they are, how beautiful, how close to nature. When she draws from her own experience, Williamson gives sound, empowering advice on relationships, work, love, sex and childrearing. Still, her soft focus on the so-called feminine virtues, including that of assuming the submissive role during sex, often seems reactionary and contradictory, as when she argues that women were meant to be passive, but later claims that woman should assert their power. This mix of the mystical, the modern (Williamson says one of her old boyfriends left her for a ``bimbo'') and the Christian could be called visionary--but the combination doesn't always make sense, as in this statement: ``Our Kingdom is our life and our life is our Kingdom. And we are all meant to rule from a glorious place.'' Author tour. (May)

Library Journal