I finally finished the Beauvoir biography over the weekend. I'm still a bit mystified by her relationship with Sarte but am trying not to judge it too harshly since my personal beliefs about feminism include the right of women to chose the lives they wish even if that life does follow more 'traditional' gender roles (obviously says the housewife) but I can't help but wonder what she might have accomplished had she not spent 50 years putting his needs ahead of her own and also I wonder how much of his work was really hers (she did a great deal of editing and rewriting for him). Even so she ended up making a significant impact on the world. Was it as great as Sarte's? I don't know enough about those sorts of things to judge.
Now I've moved on to a new book,
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. So far it's both fascinating and disturbing.