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Back before theOprah interview and the resignation as governor of Alaska, before Tina Fey's impersonation and the announcement of Bristol's pregnancy, way back to the day John McCain named his running mate, Lisa Copeland was a Sarah Palin fan. ''When she gave her convention speech, I sat in my living room and wept,'' says Copeland, a lifelong Republican and Texas native, who is a founder of a nonprofit group, the Project 19 Foundation, to move more women into political and professional leadership roles. ''She was my age, she looks like me. I really thought she would save the party.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Remember the concept of ''sisterhood''? That quaint relic of an idea that women owed it to other women to crash through ceilings and navigate a male world? It just might be taking new root in a most unexpected place -- among women with money. There are more women controlling more wealth in the U.S. than ever before. (Of those in the wealthiest tier of the country -- defined by the I.R.S. as individuals with assets of at least $1.5 million -- 43 percent are women.) And unlike the women who preceded them -- old-school patrons who gave to the museum and the symphony and their dead husbands' alma maters -- these givers are more likely to use their wealth deliberately and systematically to aid women in need. To appreciate the magnitude of this change, go back 150 years or so to the women's suffrage movement. Back to when one of its leaders, Matilda Joslyn Gage, lamented: ''We have yet to hear of a woman of wealth who has left anything for the enfranchisement of her sex. Almost every daily paper heralds the fact of some large bequest to colleges, churches and charities by rich women, but it is proverbial that they never remember the woman suffrage movement that underlies in importance all others.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nearly five years ago, my husband was offered a prestigious, challenging plum of a job in another country. At the time, my father was dying, and my older son, suffering from debilitating migraines, was struggling in school. Sometimes parents decide that what is tempting, even perfect, for them is just not right for their family. My husband turned down the job. I didn't talk much about the decision at the time. I felt guilty that my husband had to give up something he would have loved in part because I couldn't handle it, and I carried a vague shame that other families could have toughed this out but that ours was too fragile. It's hard to talk about what you are not proud of. None of this fit with my view of who I thought I should be -- an unflappable, charge-ahead type, able to roll with whatever life delivered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]