Stabiner, Karen. All Girls: Single-Sex Education and Why it Matters. New York: Riverhead Books, 2002. Cloth $25.95. 320 pp.

by Gordon Alley-Young

Journalist Karen Stahiner's friend was struggling with whether single-sex or co-ed schooling was best for her daughter. All the theories on gender and schooling were of little help. Stahiner, intrigued, decided to investigate actual experiences of single-sex education. Thus began a journey for Stahiner lasting over a year, chronicling the daily realities of two very different "all girl" schools, Marlborough, an affluent private academy in Los Angeles and The Young Women's Leadership School (TYWLS) in East Harlem. Though Stahiner enrolled her own daughter in Marlborough after doing her research, she does not ply readers with easy answers to the single-sex education question. Stahiner alternates chapters between the two schools, and through portraits of her participants' lives, she narrates the lived experience of same-sex education, good and bad, cutting through the confusion and contradictions of research and public discourse on the topic.