When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present |
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by: Gail Collins List Price: $27.99 Amazon.com's Price: $18.47 You Save: $9.52 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 305.4097309045 EAN: 9780316059541 Edition: 1 ISBN: 0316059544 Label: Little, Brown and Company Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 480 Publication Date: October 14, 2009 Publisher: Little, Brown and Company Studio: Little, Brown and Company Features:
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Editorial Review: Product Description: Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and bestselling author, recounts the astounding revolution in women's lives over the past 50 years, with her usual "sly wit and unfussy style" (People). When Everything Changed begins in 1960, when most American women had to get their husbands' permission to apply for a credit card. It ends in 2008 with Hillary Clinton's historic presidential campaign. This was a time of cataclysmic change, when, after four hundred years, expectations about the lives of American women were smashed in just a generation. A comprehensive mix of oral history and Gail Collins's keen research--covering politics, fashion, popular culture, economics, sex, families, and work--When Everything Changed is the definitive book on five crucial decades of progress. The enormous strides made since 1960 include the advent of the birth control pill, the end of "Help Wanted--Male" and "Help Wanted--Female" ads, and the lifting of quotas for women in admission to medical and law schools. Gail Collins describes what has happened in every realm of women's lives, partly through the testimonies of both those who made history and those who simply made their way. Picking up where her highly lauded book America's Women left off, When Everything Changed is a dynamic story, told with the down-to-earth, amusing, and agenda-free tone for which this beloved New York Times columnist is known. Older readers, men and women alike, will be startled as they are reminded of what their lives once were--"Father Knows Best" and "My Little Margie" on TV; daily weigh-ins for stewardesses; few female professors; no women in the Boston marathon, in combat zones, or in the police department. Younger readers will see their history in a rich new way. It has been an era packed with drama and dreams--some dashed and others realized beyond anyone's imagining. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Amazing informationCollins' two books on the history of " America's Women" are a must-read for every American. Rating: - Intellectually stimulating, completely enjoyable, and a reminder of what women have yet to accomplish.When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present Book Review by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D. In this 481-page book, there are 30 pages of notes and an 11-page bibliography. This gives you an idea of the thoroughness of the book. Gail Collins was the editorial page editor for the New York Times from 2001 to 2007, the first woman to have held that position, and she currently writes a column for the Times' op-ed page. It goes without saying that she is an excellent writer, and every page of her book reflects her skills and easy-to-read style. This book is a wonderful and important chronology as well as a terrific reference work that is full of insights, stories, historical facts, important information, and inspiration. Her stories of real women (including Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Obama--and others we don't know) make the book even more interesting. Of the personal interviews, one reviewer writes, "[they] portray the details of the daily lives of American women of the era. This is not library research. It is woman to woman sharing of memories, frustrations and small victories that took place as `everything changed'" Whether you lived through it, read about it in other books, or are new to the area of feminism and women's rights, there is something in this book for you. Carol M. Frohlinger, in her amazon.com review, writes, "From June Cleaver to Hillary Clinton, Gail Collins` new book, When Everything Changed, reminds us of both how much everything has changed for American women in the last 50 years and just how little. Collins writes skillfully about the `olden' days when a glamour career for a woman was to be a stewardess and when the reason most women went to college to get a `Mrs..'" Frohlinger continues her review saying, "What Collins does particularly well though is to highlight that there still isn't gender parity in America's workplaces or homes. She ends on a note that celebrates how far we've come with a reality check - the gender pay gap still exists, too few women serve as CEOs or sit on corporate boards and the work-life balance conundrum has yet to be resolved." This is the kind of book that should be required reading for everyone--not just women. It is intellectually stimulating, completely enjoyable, and a reminder of what women have yet to accomplish. Rating: - For Women Born After 1960I didn't need to finish this book because I'm a 66-year-old feminist. Highly recommended for women born after 1960. Rating:  - Good History But A Bit Unbalanced. (Men, don't go there.)As someone who is old enough to be Gail Collins father (b 1917), who raised a daughter of her generation and who saw and experienced the revolution she writes about, who approved of much of it and who is of the opinion that we are much better off today than we were in respect to the rights of women and minorities in, say, 1950, I need to say to the men who may read this book. Just don't go there. You can't win. Anything you say will be treated as male bias. There is no balance. Read the book. Know the history. Measure your feelings and go away. It's a great history. Well written, but a bit incomplete. It says nothing about the trauma to families and to a whole generation of parents who saw many of their daughters go down a wrong and sometimes deadly path in the name of women's rights or of racial preference or the protests against the Vietnam War or the sexual revolution (Example: my freshman grandson at 18 being introduced to the open dorms and bisexual bathrooms of the University of California system) or any one of the popular "liberal" causes of the 60s and 70s. Apart from the Great Depression the Social Revolution of the period was the greatest social trauma of our lives. Thank God it is over - and we're the better for it; but I don't want to read about it. However, if you do this is the book to read. And, by the way, how is it that by far the majority of the reviews I see in these spaces are by women. Where are the men who read this book? Rating:  - Price too high!!Really love Gail Collins.... she is one of the most talented writers on the scene, but.... Won't/can't order until price drops to $9.99 or below! Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display |
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