Black Feminist Voices in Politics. By Evelyn M. Simien. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 196p. $71.50 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Evelyn M. Simien makes three major contributions in this book. First, and most important, she uses insights derived from a black feminist theory that is largely literary to inform hard, number-crunching empirical research. Black feminist theorists from Maria Stewart and Sojourner Truth to Kimberlé Crenshaw and bell hooks are used to derive operational definitions and testable hypotheses. Those seeking unity in the discipline would do well to study this book.