Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She is Changing the World. Dan Kindlon, $32.95

From the bestselling coauthor of Raising Cain, an in-depth look at the emotional lives of boys comes an inspired look at the "young woman who is destined to be a leader. She is talented, highly motivated, and self-confident."

These alpha girls, as Kindlon calls them, are a post-feminist cohort who has grown up with an internalized sense of emancipation that was lacking in previous generations. In addition to providing an inside look into the alpha girls' lives, and the feminist tradition which they inherit, Kindlon's work explores the relationships alpha girls have with the men in their lives - fathers and boyfriends, mostly-particularly in collegiate and post-collegiate life. Alpha Girls is powerful reading for anyone looking to understand the upcoming generation's driven, confident young women.

Boy Smarts: Mentoring Boys for Success at School. Barry MacDonald, $29.95

Educators and parents hoping to inspire boys of all ages to excel at school will be find imaginative and practical guidelines for authentic engagement in meeting boys’ varied learning needs.

Also available: Boy Smarts Action Study Guide. Barry MacDonald, $29.95

Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities. Ken Corbett, $31.50

Ken Corbett argues for a new psychology of masculinity, one that is not strictly dependent on normative expectation. As he writes in his introduction, “no two boys, no two boyhoods are the same.”

Corbett grounds his understanding of masculinity in his clinical practice and in a dynamic reading of feminist and queer theories. New social ideals are being articulated. New possibilities for recognition are in play. How is a boy made between the body, the family, and the culture? Does a boy grow by identifying with his father, or by separating from his mother? Can we continue to presume that masculinity is made at home? Corbett uses case studies to defy stereotypes, depicting masculinity as various and complex. He examines the roles that parental and cultural anxiety play in development, and he argues for a more nuanced approach to cross-gendered fantasy and experience, one that does not mistake social consensus for well-being. Corbett challenges us at last to a fresh consideration of gender, with profound implications for understanding all boys.

Boys Adrift: the Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Men. Leonard Sax, $17.00

In Boys Adrift, family physician and research psychologist Leonard Sax argues that a combination of social and biological factors is creating an environment that is literally toxic to boys. Misguided overemphasis on reading and math as early as kindergarten, too much time spent playing video games, over-reliance on medication for attention deficit disorders (much more common in boys than in girls), and overlooked endocrine disturbances are actually causing damage to boys’ brains.

Dr. Sax offers a wide range of reassuring remedies— including innovative ways parents can wean their sons away from video games, practical steps they can take to improve their sons’ schooling, and surprisingly simple life changes they can make to protect boys from the environmental estrogens that undermine boys’ motivation. Filled with moving success stories that will inspire parents and teachers everywhere, Boys Adrift points the way to a new future for today’s boys and young men.

The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. Rachel Simmons, $32.50

In The Curse of the Good Girl, author Rachel Simmons argues that in lionizing the Good Girl we are teaching girls to embrace a version of selfhood that sharply curtails their power and potential. Unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless, the Good Girl is a paradigm so narrowly defined that it’s unachievable. When girls inevitably fail to live up—experiencing conflicts with peers, making mistakes in the classroom or on the playing field—they are paralyzed by self-criticism, stunting the growth of vital skills and habits. Simmons traces the poisonous impact of Good Girl pressure on development and provides a strategy to reverse the tide. At once expository and prescriptive, The Curse of the Good Girl is a call to arms from a new front in female empowerment.

Gender, Bullying and Harassment: Strategies to End Sexism and Homophobia in Schools. Elizabeth Meyer, $31.50

Educator, researcher and author Elizabeth Meyers looks at the key gender issues related to bullying and harassment in schools and offers readers tangible and flexible suggestions to help positively transform the culture of their school and reduce the incidences of gendered harassment. The text features sections that speak specifically to administrators, teachers, counselors, student leaders and community and family members.

Gender and the Media. Rosalind Gill, $29.99

Written in a clear and accessible style, with plenty of examples from British and American media, this book offers a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media and an up-to-date assessment of the key issues and debates.

Girls On the Edge: the Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls. Leonard Sax, $29.95

Dr. Sax provides parents with tools to help girls become confident women, along with practical tips on helping your daughter choose a sport, nurturing her spirit through female-centered activities, and more. Compelling and inspiring, Girls on the Edge points the way to a new future for today’s young women.

Girls Will Be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters. JoAnn Deak, $19.99

Deak, an associate of Carol Gilligan, and expert on brain development, learning environments and gender issues, has written a balanced, insightful and energizing study of the progress of girls 6-16. "Girls Will Be Girls offers parents humor, understanding, parenting philosophy, and well-founded pearls of wisdom. It is a satisfying and delicious read." -Michael Thompson, coauthor of Raising Cain.

Growing Great Girls: a Gender Responsive Life Skills Curriculum. Denise Bray & Wendy Dougherty, $56.95

Growing Great Girls focuses on decision-making skills, social resiliency, critical thinking skills, emotional knowledge, self-discovery and practical skills across six domains — physical, sexual, emotional relational, intellectual and spiritual. Designed for meaningful exchanges with small groups of girls, Growing Great Girls creatively blends research-based interactive exercises with fun and meaningful worksheets.

Helping Boys Succeed in School: a Practical Guide for Parents and Teachers. Terry Neu & Rich Weinfeld, $19.50

Helping Boys Succeed in School gives parents and teachers the tools they need to help boys succeed, including strategies for channeling their interests, keeping boys actively engaged, increasing their participation in humanities classes like language arts, and dealing with the unique social and emotional problems they face in school.

It's a Baby Boy! The Unique Wonders and Special Nature of Your Son From Pregnancy to Two Years. The Gurian Institute, Stacie Bering, Adie Goldberg, $15.95

It's a Baby Girl! The Unique Wonder and Special Nature of Your Daughter From Pregnancy to Two Years. The Gurian Institute, Stacie Bering, Adie Goldberg, $15.95

Practical science based tips and guidelines and stories for parents, including:

• The very different health issues, neurological and biological development of boys and girls

• How to understand the core nature of your child and nourish it through problems of crying, fussing, eating, sleeping, attaching and other key issues during the first 12 months of life

• Warm hearted stories and tips from real moms, and a preview of what's to come as your child becomes a toddler, preschooler, and beyond

It’s a Boy! Understanding Your Son’s Development from Birth to Age 18. Michael Thompson, $19.00

Practical, insightful, wonderfully engaging, It’s a Boy! is the definitive guide to raising boys in today’s world, revealing with humor, compassion, and joy all the infinite varieties of boys and the deep and profound ways in which we love them.

Media, Gender and Identity. David Gauntlett, $39.95

This highly readable book explores theories about popular culture and the relationship between media and identity. Along with an outline of creative approaches to exploring the media’s influence on gender identity, Gauntlett discusses film, magazines, TV, self-help books, YouTube and more, to show how media plays a role in the shaping of self-perception.

The Mother-Daughter Project: How Mothers and Daughters Can Band Together, Beat the Odds, and Thrive Through Adolescence. SuEllen Hamkins & Renée Schultz, $30.00

At once simple and revolutionary, this book details the success of the Mother-Daughter Project’s groundbreaking model, providing the reader with a road map for strengthening her bond with her own daughter, and providing strategies for staying close through adolescence and beyond.

Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers and Other Media Stereotypes. Lyn Mikel Brown, Sharon Lamb & Mark Tappan, $32.99

Packaging Boyhood offers parents a long, hard look at what boys are watching, reading, hearing and doing. The authors give parents advice on how to talk with their sons about these troubling images and provide them with tools to help their sons resist these messages and be their unique selves.

The Purpose of Boys: Helping Our Sons Find Meaning, Significance and Direction in Their Lives. Michael Gurian, $31.95

In this final volume of his trilogy about boys, Gurian reveals how important purpose is for the success and happiness of boys and explains how a boy's core personality, nature, and genetic predisposition functions to create both strengths and weaknesses in their journey towards maturity. Gurian draws on the latest science and field research on how boys develop neurologically, the unique issues they must confront, and how their strategy for moral development and success in life is predicated on their nature and genetic predispositions. He tells parents and educators how to customize their support and interventions according to the unique needs, weaknesses, and strengths of each individual boy and young man.

Also available:

The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life. Michael Gurian, with Kathy Stevens. $18.99

The Wonder of Boys: What Parent, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men. Michael Gurian, $16.95

The Secret Lives of Teen Girls: What Your Mother Wouldn’t Talk about But Your Daughter Needs to Know. Evelyn Resh, $18.95

In The Secret Lives of Teen Girls, Evelyn Resh — a certified nurse-midwife, sexuality counselor, and mother to a teenage daughter — explores the provocative world of female adolescent sexuality. Resh explains how developing a sexual identity — often without adult guidance or a basic knowledge of what is happening physically and emotionally — can have lifelong effects on a girl’s well-being.

In this insightful book, Resh confronts serious issues of adolescence, including sex, eating disorders, and substance abuse; as well as less serious but still troubling issues like battles with parents over clothing and curfews, the importance of being “cool,” and the complexity of friendships.

That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week: Helping Disorganized and Distracted Boys Succeed in School and Life. Ana Homayoun, $20.00

Top academic counselor Ana Homayoun has helped turn even the most disorganized, scattered and unfocused boys into successful young people who consistently meet their personal and academic challenges. She does this by getting back to basics, starting with a simple fact: most boys need to be taught how to get organized, how to study, and how to visualize, embrace and meet their own goals.

Much more than a study guide, this insightful, user-friendly book provides a roadmap for the success.

The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures. Stephen Hinshaw, $28.00

Combining moving personal stories about girls and their families with extensive research into genetic risk, vulnerability, and cultural influence, Dr. Hinshaw provides strategies and tools for parents who want to empower their daughters to deal in healthy ways with today’s pressures.

You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Deborah Tannen, $19.95

With inspired observations, pitch-perfect dialogues, and deeply moving memories of her own mother, author Deborah Tannen untangles the knots daughters and mothers can get tied up in. Readers will appreciate Tannen’s humor and come away with real hope for breaking down barriers and opening new lines of communication. Compassionate and insightful, You’re Wearing That illuminates and enriches one of the most important relationships in our lives.