A LIFE OF HER OWN: The Transformation...

A LIFE OF HER OWN: The Transformation of a Countrywoman in Twentieth-Century France by Emilie Carles, translated from the French by Avriel H. Goldberger (Penguin: $12, illustrated). In this bracing autobiography, Emilie Carles (1900-1979) narrates not only her own journey from peasant girl to environmental activist but also the passage of her remote mountain village from the era of horse power to the age of television. Carles was an outspoken feminist before the term existed in France, rebelling against the agrarian culture that condemned women to loveless marriages and endless child-bearing. Carles became a national heroine in the ‘80s, when she successfully organized the opposition to a proposed super highway through her still-pristine valley. Refreshingly, she never boasts about her achievements, treating her fight for women’s rights, her defiance of the Nazi collaborators, her opposition to the Algerian War and her environmental activism as nothing more than sensible responses to intolerable situations.