Whether you're an individual woman looking for help or a reader looking for the truth about the thousands of women who are battered by the men they live with, Next Time, She'll Be Dead is the one book you should read. -Gloria Steinem Next Time, She'll Be Dead brings to light the secret history of the undeclared war on women in America." -Kim Wozencraft, New York Newsday The New York Times Book Review San Francisco Chronicle -The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Next Time, She'll Be Dead implodes any complacency one might have that having 'come a long way' in this area is anywhere close to far enough." -Angela Browne, The Boston Globe
Significant and depressing, this study by the author of Women Who Kill brings home as few others have the number of women who are battered and the virtually insuperable obstacles they face trying to combat abuse. We learn that more than a million American women are battered each year, most by husbands or boyfriends, who are also likely to hit children in the home as well. The police, according to Jones, are unsympathetic to battered women, whom they regard as partly, if not entirely, responsible for the attacks they suffer. In the most shocking sections of the book, Jones asserts that there is an entrenched misogyny in the legal system; she cites the sentence of a man who shot his wife in the head (where the bullet is still lodged) to three months while, later, she was sentenced to life because, after being threatened repeatedly, she hired a man to kill her husband. As Jones so succinctly puts it, ``battered women are battered once again by the law.'' She devotes a chapter to suggested remedies. First serial to Mirabella and Glamour. (Jan.)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
An impassioned, informed, and immensely readable critique of domestic violence and society's dangerously ineffectual response by the author of Women Who Kill.
The author, a journalist and best-selling author (Women Who Kill), tackles the subject intelligently and forcefully, describing the pervasiveness of domestic violence and explaining the social and psychological circumstances. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
With all the media attention that battering has received, why do incidents of domestic violence still continue to rise? This is the question posed in Ann Jones' book as she shows how our society still supports violence toward women. Even with the current laws, support services and public awareness campaigns, abuse continues. One point that emerges in this discussion is our society's particular propensity for denial. We want quick and painless solutions. Once a problem has been aired at social gatherings, made it to Oprah and Geraldo, and had a few laws passed, the public losses interest. As this book points out, many of the programs fail to help, and the laws enacted are ineffective because the basic structure remians unchanged. Ultimately, this means we must rethink our own attitudes toward violence, and toward those who are victimized by it.
WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women
A study so painful in its case histories and reported numbers of women abused by men that most readers will flinch as they absorb it; by the author of Women Who Kill (1980). But that is Jones's purpose: to rouse men and women—especially legislators, judges, police, and social workers who fail to protect women—to awareness. Among the numbers: from 1967 to 1973, 17,500 women and children were killed in the US by "battering men," slightly less than half the number of men killed in Vietnam during the same period. Two decades later, police receive reports of more than 21,000 "domestic assaults" (including rape and murder) every week. Women's legal struggle to secure a life free of violence dates back to English common law and to 19th-century American statutes that permitted husbands to "chastise" their wives without danger of prosecution. Although subsequent laws protect women and children against abuse, the right of a man to control "his" woman lurks in the public consciousness—leading to cops reluctant to interfere in "domestic disputes"; judges wary of imprisoning men convicted of wife-beating; and a general tendency to blame the victim—even when, Jones says, she's made every effort to escape her oppressor. The author cites instances of women assaulted and killed while living under so-called orders of protection, and of women attacked where they should be safest: in the courthouse (lawyers and judges number among the victims). What can be done? Jones suggests changing the focus of inquiry from the women who are battered to the men who attack, and questioning the "hydraulic" theory of human behavior—that violence wells up in men and must be released.She offers guidelines for change—including the passage of the ERA—that would affect how we view women both as societal members and as human beings. A powerful, frightening report that drives home the fact that doing violence to another is tolerated in this society—especially if the victim is a female sex partner.
