Ewwww. Terhune's definition of a super-woman, in its entirety, is a woman who is wildly attractive to men. He does a prologue in which he explains that that's the only trait they have in common, they vary in every other respect - but there's an invisible set of expectations that Terhune has and doesn't explicate. He thinks that the ideal super-woman is also stupid, entirely selfish, and very beautiful - every time (frequently) one of his examples breaks that model he is volubly surprised. She was charitable! She helped another woman! She showed any financial, or political, acumen - he spends paragraphs on how unlikely these traits are in the women he's applied this label to. Ugh. Oh, and long discussions of any woman who wasn't beautiful (or conventionally beautiful) - how they could possibly have been attractive. I was learning interesting things about interesting (at least some of them) women (from Helen of Troy to Ninion de l'Enclos to George Sands), but it was in spite of Terhune's opinionated writing, not because of it. And the cherry on top - he wrote with glee about the downfall of his super-women, and was visibly disappointed in the ones who actually managed to have a happy life at the end. I love Terhune's dog books, but I'm not reading anything else he wrote from now on. UGH. ( )