Deborah Spar's life experience is socially and economically in a niche that many might envy: upper middle class, well educated, privileged, with the world at her feet and opportunity everywhere she looked. She assumed the benefits that time and circumstance gave her. This book is more than the story of her wake-up call to the reality of her life as "wonder woman" and the lives that so many women in the developed world face. The challenges and the impossibility of having it all. This is a thoughtful journey of someone with wide and deep experience who reaches inside her intellect, her mind, and her heart to draw the questions and lessons of the society we have developed. This is not a how-to book. This not a 12 step program to being a successful wonder woman. This is a workbook, deftly written with a balance of mass appeal and intellectual rigor that is rare.President Spar follows in the tradition of remarkable women who have headed that small institution across the street from the mighty Columbia. As a child of Columbia from student to faculty that bookended a career in journalism, President Spar reminds me of what I missed by - in my day - not being able to take advantage of the Barnard experience. This is a book that stands in its time as a pillar of understanding that will be as valuable to future historians and others who try to understand the culture that is shifting beneath our feet. For those of us in the experience, this is a brilliant guide by a gifted leader.