Books
The shelf we'd hand a friend
The books on perimenopause and menopause our team and members keep coming back to. Grouped by topic, with one line on why this one. Nothing here is sponsored or affiliate-linked. If a recommendation stops holding up, it comes off.
Jump to a shelf
- Start here — the lay of the land
- Hormones, MHT, and the prescribing conversation
- Menopause after a hormone-sensitive cancer
- Training, strength, and the changing body
- Food, nutrition, and the changing appetite
- Culture, meaning, and not feeling like a problem to be solved
- Why women's health is the way it is
- Menopause at work — for you and for employers
Start here — the lay of the land
If you're new to all of this, these four give you the vocabulary, the history of why menopause care is the way it is, and an honest read on what changed after the WHI.
- Book
The Menopause Manifesto
by Dr. Jen Gunter
The clearest single book on the biology, written by a gynaecologist who refuses to dress it up. Good first read.
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Estrogen Matters
by Dr. Avrum Bluming and Dr. Carol Tavris
Why a generation lost twenty years of MHT after the WHI, told carefully. Pair it with the cancer-risk page on this site.
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What Fresh Hell Is This?
by Heather Corinna
Anatomy-not-identity, queer- and trans-aware, and one of the only menopause books that doesn't assume you're a cis married mother.
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MenoWars: Why menopause's moment has gone horribly wrong, and how you can navigate your way through it
by Fiona Clark
A journalist's sharp, evidence-based look at how menopause became a battleground — from medical misogyny to TikTok misinformation. Useful context for why the conversation feels so noisy.
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Hormones, MHT, and the prescribing conversation
When you want to understand the actual drugs — body-identical estradiol, micronized progesterone, testosterone, the synthetics — before the appointment.
Menopause after a hormone-sensitive cancer
Menopause that arrives because of cancer treatment, or that has to be navigated after a hormone-sensitive diagnosis, is a different conversation.
Training, strength, and the changing body
When the cardio that used to work stops working and the standard fitness advice was built on twenty-year-old men.
- Book
Next Level
by Dr. Stacy Sims and Selene Yeager
Strength, fueling, and recovery written specifically for the perimenopausal body. The most-cited title in our member chats.
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New Moves in Menopause
by Dr. Maria Luque
A fitness-first guide to midlife — strength, mobility, and what to actually do in the gym when the old routine stops working. Practical, no nonsense, doable.
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Food, nutrition, and the changing appetite
When the way you ate in your thirties stops fitting the body you're in now, and you want a plain-English read on protein, fibre, and the perimenopause weight conversation.
Culture, meaning, and not feeling like a problem to be solved
Some weeks you don't need another protocol. You need to read someone who treats this stage as a transition, not a deficiency.
Why women's health is the way it is
Two books that zoom out from individual symptoms to the structural reason care has been thin: who funds the research, who builds the products, and who gets ignored. Helpful context for why your appointment can feel like an argument.
- Book
Undervalued to Unavoidable: Women's Health as Infrastructure
by Marissa Fayer
Pre-order, out June 2026. The case for treating women's health as economic infrastructure rather than a niche category — written by a 25-year medtech operator, aimed at the boardroom but useful for any reader who's wondered why the system feels so slow.
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The Billion Dollar Blindspot
by Maryann Selfe
How women's health became one of the most under-researched, under-invested categories in medicine — and where that's finally starting to change. Less clinical than the others on this shelf; more the why-behind-the-why.
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Menopause at work — for you and for employers
Two reads that treat menopause as a workplace issue, not just a personal one: practical for anyone working through symptoms, and useful for the HR leads and managers building support. Pair them with the free templates in the work toolkit.
- Book
M-Power: A menopause action plan for organizations
by Laura Haycock
The most HR-practical of the set — written for employers, with a step-by-step plan for building menopause support into how an organization actually runs. Hand it to whoever owns people policy.
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Working Through Menopause
by Dr. Mache Seibel and Dr. Sharon Seibel
Frames menopause as a work-related health issue, not just a private one — with the case for why supporting employees through it retains talent. Good for the business argument as well as the human one.
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