Is It Hot in Here? Or Is It Me? The Complete Guide to Menopause, by Pat Wingert and Barbara Kantrowitz (Workman), is a designed-alike, soundalike companion to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, with similar charts about what to eat, questions to ask your doctor, and Q&As ("How hot do you really get in a hot flash?").

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Meanwhile, nearly four decades after the revolutionarily frank Our Bodies, Ourselves omitted the topic of menopause, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause, by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (Touchstone), corrects the error. This sequel offers the same kind of compelling, first-person stories and sound healthcare information as its predecessor, and this time it’s got everything about vaginal dryness, osteoporosis, depression, and other problems you didn’t trust your doctor to give you the goods on.

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And in Hormone Decision (Rodale), Wall Street Journal columnist Tara Parker-Pope uses her award-winning reporting on hormone replacement therapy to clarify the treatment’s risks and benefits. Both, she argues, have been misrepresented by scientists and the media. Like the authors of classic women’s health books before her, Parker-Pope trusts that smart women, armed with the facts, can make good decisions for themselves.

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Originally published in MORE magazine, February 2007.