Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

"The backlash against women is real. This is the book we need to help us understand it, to struggle through the battle fatigue, and to keep going." -- Alice Walker. "Withering commentary... This eloquent, brilliantly argued book should be read by everyone concerned with gender equality." -- Publishers Weekly."Backlash is the right book at exactly the right time... This trenchant, passoinate, and lively book should be an eye-opener even for feminists who thought they understood what has been going on." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review -- ReviewIn this monumental investigative work, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi offers exhaustive and disquieting evidence of a "powerful counter-assault on women's rights" - a backlash - intent on repossessing the hard won spoils of the feminist movement. Backlash sounds the alarm on the cultural forces coaxing women into believing that the independence, equality, and power they have struggled to achieve are actually the source of their problems - from cellulite and infertility to sexual harassment and career burnout. Disassembling the hearth of American social institutions, Susan Faludi exposes and piths the creeping pests of the backlash - manipulated statistics, beguiling turns of language, and condescending fashion dictates. She gracefully ushers us into the offices and homes of various captains of the backlash, turns on her microphone, and lets these opponents of feminism indict themselves. She exposes the New Right, showing strong-minded women who drop their kids at daycare, "report to their offices in suits and issue press releases demanding that women return to the home," to protect family values, of course. The cruel irony of being at once a victim and a purveyor of the backlash typifies the insidiousness of the trend. The unyielding 450+ pages of research and documentation that make up Backlash bear the mark of an indefatigable journalist who dares to challenge her adversaries and stir her readers. The end of the book contains more than eighty pages of citations, as well as an extensive index. This provocative book will stand for a long time. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Colleen McQueen[Faludi] debunks the generalizations of "trend journalism" with firsthand reporting and precise statistics, and the result is wholly convincing. -- The New Yorker