The Road from Coorain

I spent a while this weekend reading The Road from Coorain, a memoir popular about fifteen years ago that I'd found around the office. In it, Jill Ker Conway, an academic and the first female president of Smith College, tells the story of her youth and education in Australia up to the day she left f......more

Jill Ker Conway, it's so hard to love your story when you're such a darned overachiever.......more

Solid memoir on growing up in 40s Australia, first in the Outback on a sheep farm that nearly collapses due to a long drought, then in Sydney as she tries to adjust to life a smart, pretty woman in a very chauvinistic academic world. She loses some important people way too early, and her mom begins......more

A fantastic and engaging memoir showing how Jill Ker Conway's early years on the sheep farm in Coorain, Australia helped shape her into the academic she later became here in the United States. This book starts off beautifully with in depth descriptions of the harsh Australian outback, a place I've ne......more

I loved this memoir for two reasons--first for the lyrically beautiful story of growing up in the lonely, remote Australian outback; and second for the story of her struggle to become a well-educated and successful female in what was at that time (early 50s) a 'man's world'. In her story we see the......more