Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary

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Warner's books on culture, sociology, history, and folklore almost always top my list of favorites, and this book is a splendidly erudite history of the concept of the Virgin Mary. My only real quibble with the book is that Warner clearly has feminist Opinions about how the Church and society as a whole have used Mary to oppress women. This is not a problem; I hold similar Opinions, and would be interested in reading more about Warner's. The real problem is that her incisive cultural criticsm tends to appear in the book in short, jarring bursts that don't flow smoothly with the rest of the text. At times it was almost as though there were really two books she wanted to write -- one straight-up history, one cultural criticism -- and she couldn't quite make up her mind which she was writing. This is not a fatal flaw in the book, by any stretch, but it does call attention to how much Warner's writing style has improved in the decades since this book was first published.