Eight Women Philosophers: Theory, Politics, and Feminism. By Jane Duran. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2006. 308 pp. $64.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Searching for evidence of women's presence in the canon of philosophy, I found that the Cambridge Companion Series, an extensive and prestigious set of 110 volumes offering the “most convenient and accessible guides to the major philosophers available” (from their Website), has only two such volumes devoted to women philosophers. The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt was published in 2000, The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir in 2003. Jane Duran, in contrast, has found eight women philosophers to study (seven in addition to Beauvoir), and her book offers a rich introduction to important themes in the work of Hildegard of Bingen, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor Mill, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, and Simone de Beauvoir.