It's a Woman's World

Book excerpt: Ruth Stout, author of Gardening Without Work, tackles the problem of living without (too much) work in It's a Woman's World. As always, Ruth's quirky, common-sense approach manages to entertain as much as it informs, and because fundamentals never change, this 1960 book is still as delightful as ever. Ruth, who in her teens helped temperance activist Carrie Nation smash saloon windows, could turn any aspect of life into an adventure. She may have been the only woman who gardened in the nude, wrote a book on happiness (If You Would Be Happy), and wrote another about the quirky people who came to visit Company Coming: Six Decades of Hospitality. (All these are available from Norton Creek Press.) Ruth died in 1980 at the age of 96.