China's Transition Book

Spanning from the mid-19th century to the present, this is a mix of rigorous scholarship from the author and personal accounts from women(including an incredible personal tale from the author herself), destabilizing the theory that the custom of dowry in India/parts of Pakistan is directly responsible for the outbreak of murdered wives in the region.
Instead, Oldenburg argues that policies of the British Raj (during British imperial rule of India), which privatized land ownership into exclusively male hands and exerted intense economic pressure upon Indian male farmers/land holders, transformed dowries from safety-net into a catalyst for marital conflict and violence. The historical framework provided in the first five chapters is rich in detail and serves as the foundation for Oldenburg's argument. The last chapter, which consists of women's personal accounts of violence and their efforts to escape it, could almost stand alone and still be worthy of five stars.