Quick Take
- Narration: Angie Kane brings a thoughtful, measured delivery that honors both the memoir sections and the denser philosophical material without flattening either.
- Themes: Women philosophers recovered from obscurity, institutional misogyny in academia, the memoir of an intellectual awakening
- Mood: Intelligent and searching, occasionally wry, always purposeful
- Verdict: A genuinely original hybrid of memoir, biography, and philosophical history that earns its 4.5 rating across a wide range of listeners.
I studied literature, not philosophy, and I spent years assuming the Western philosophical canon was simply less interesting to me than fiction and criticism. Then a colleague pressed How to Think Like a Woman into my hands at a conference, and I listened to the first two hours on a train home. By the time I arrived, I was annoyed at myself for not having known the names Damaris Cudworth Masham and Mary Astell before. That specific annoyance, directed inward and then outward at the institutions that buried these thinkers, is exactly what Regan Penaluna intends to provoke.
Penaluna is a philosopher and journalist who began her career with the conventional expectation that the Western philosophical tradition would welcome her. What she found instead was a culture of misogyny, harassment, and the systematic devaluation of women’s thinking. Her response to that experience was to go looking for the women who had navigated similar terrain three centuries earlier, and she found four: Damaris Cudworth Masham, daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and a contemporary of John Locke; Mary Astell, who made a living writing philosophy at a time when women rarely did either; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist, and playwright; and Mary Wollstonecraft, the most familiar of the four. Together they form the backbone of an alternative history of philosophy that Penaluna weaves through her own memoir.
Our Take on How to Think Like a Woman
The structural ambition here is considerable. Penaluna is doing at least three things simultaneously: writing a personal memoir of academic disillusionment, constructing intellectual biographies of four largely forgotten philosophers, and making an argument about what the Western philosophical tradition has systematically excluded. Any one of these would be a worthwhile book. The question is whether the combination coheres, and the answer is mostly yes. One reviewer notes that the philosophy is better than the memoir, with the personal sections feeling comparatively thin beside the insights from the historical thinkers. That asymmetry is real, but it does not undermine the book’s essential project. The memoir provides an emotional entry point for readers who might otherwise find the philosophical history forbidding.
Why Listen to How to Think Like a Woman
Angie Kane’s narration handles the tonal variety gracefully. The memoir sections have a more intimate, conversational quality in her reading, while the passages engaging directly with the philosophical writings of Masham, Astell, Cockburn, and Wollstonecraft take on the appropriate weight without becoming academic. Kane is particularly good at the moments where Penaluna’s own voice turns wry or sardonic about the treatment these women received. At 8 hours and 26 minutes, the runtime is efficient for the amount of intellectual ground covered. This is not a book that overstays its welcome.
What to Watch For in How to Think Like a Woman
Readers expecting either a straightforward philosophy history or a straightforward memoir may need to recalibrate. The book refuses to be one thing, and the balance shifts across chapters in ways that are sometimes jarring. The sections on Wollstonecraft are the most developed and will be familiar territory for readers already acquainted with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The earlier figures, particularly Masham and Cockburn, get proportionally less space than they arguably deserve, though Penaluna acknowledges this is partly a function of the historical record available to her.
Who Should Listen to How to Think Like a Woman
This works well for anyone interested in feminist intellectual history, in the history of philosophy more broadly, or in academic memoir. One reviewer recommends it specifically to every woman whether or not she has an interest in philosophy, and I think that is apt. The book requires no prior philosophical background. It also works well for listeners who engage with writers like Rebecca Traister or Jill Lepore, who similarly blend personal voice with rigorous historical research. Listeners looking for a prescriptive how-to guide based on the title may be surprised by the book’s actual focus, which is historical and critical.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a philosophy background to follow How to Think Like a Woman?
No background is required. Penaluna explains philosophical concepts clearly as she introduces them, and her approach is memoir-inflected throughout, which makes even the denser intellectual material accessible to general readers.
Which of the four women philosophers does Penaluna cover most extensively?
Mary Wollstonecraft receives the most developed treatment, partly because more historical material survives about her and partly because her work is most familiar to modern readers. Masham and Astell are treated with real depth, but Cockburn receives comparatively less space.
How much of the audiobook is personal memoir versus intellectual biography?
The two strands are woven throughout rather than separated into distinct sections. Roughly speaking, the personal memoir provides framing and connective tissue while the intellectual biography of the four philosophers drives the substantive argument. The balance shifts chapter by chapter.
Does Angie Kane’s narration suit the book’s mix of tones?
Kane handles both the intimate memoir register and the more analytical philosophical passages with appropriate shifts in delivery. Listeners who have found narrator mismatches disruptive in similar hybrid nonfiction should not have that problem here.
