Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women - Softcover

Faludi, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307345424 ISBN 13: 9780307345424

Publisher: Crown, 2006

Synopsis

From the author of In the Darkroom, a feminist classic and skillful examination of the attack on women’s rights.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award · “Enraging, enlightening, and invigorating, Backlash is, most of all, true.”—Newsday

Today’s political climate leaves no doubt that American women are still being assaulted by the same antifeminist backlash messages that Susan Faludi brilliantly exposed in her 1991 bestseller. When it was first published, Backlash made headlines for puncturing popular media myths like the “infertility epidemic” and the “man shortage.” The statistic-defying, willfully fictitious coverage, Faludi pointed out, contributed to an anti-woman backlash. The fifteenth anniversary edition, with an updated preface by the author, brings backlash consciousness into the twenty-first century.

Faludi’s words seem especially prophetic in post-Trump America. That glass ceiling remains unshattered, women are still punished for wanting to succeed, and reproductive rights are still hanging by a thread. But Backlash is an alarm bell for women of every generation—waking us up to the dangers that we all face.

About this title

Review:

A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement, she writes, "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched, Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.

From the Publisher:

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction, this controversial, thought-provoking, and timely book is "as groundbreaking as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique." -- Newsweek.

"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

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0307345424
• ISBN 13: 9780307345424
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 608