With The Reckoning, authors Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal, and Sue Scott bring into focus the accomplishments of a new generation of women artists who have benefited from the ground-breaking efforts of their predecessors.

Focusing on 24 of the most acclaimed international women artists born since 1960, the book is organized in four thematic sections. "Bad Girls" profiles artists whose work represents an assault on conventional notions of gender and racial difference. "History Lessons" offers reflections on the self in the context of history and globalization. "Spellbound" focuses on women's embrace of the irrational, the subjective, and the surreal, while "Domestic Disturbances" takes on women's conflicted relationship to home, family, and security.

The book also examines how the institutions of the art world have changed, and how those changes affect the women artists of today. Written in lively prose and fully illustrated throughout, this remarkable book gives a uniquely informed account of the wonderful diversity of recent contemporary art by women.