When Everything Changed - Softcover

Collins, Gail

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316014044 ISBN 13: 9780316014045

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2010

Synopsis

Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and author of No Stopping Us Now, 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Gail Collins was the Editorial Page Editor for the New York Times from 2001-2007--the first woman to have held that position. She currently writes a column for the Time's Op-Ed page twice weekly.

Review:

"Did feminism fail? Gail Collins's smart, thorough, often droll and extremely readable account of women's recent history in America not only answers this question brilliantly, but also poses new ones about the past and the present."―Amy Bloom, The New York Times Book Review

"Until now, the second wave women's movement hasn't had its big ambitious history--the equivalent to Taylor Branch's multivolume narrative of the civil rights movement....nothing as sweeping and accessible as this."―Margaret Talbot, Slate.com's "Double X"

"Among the impressive features of Ms. Collins's book is her genial, fair-minded sympathy, her refusal to smirk at the excesses of the most radical '70s feminists or at the stance of women, among them Phyllis Schlafly, who counseled their sisters to stay home where they belonged."―Francine Prose, New York Times

"What better time to look at American women's progress since the '60s, now that the dust has settled on the 2008 presidential election when so much was won (and lost) by women?... Gail Collins's near epic history When Everything Changed...also captures the playfulness and humor in women's advancement."―Elizabeth Toohey, The Christian Science Monitor

"'The past is a foreign country' is the kind of hallowed quotation that's resolutely opaque until you stumble on something that drives home its emotional truth. The uncanny feeling it references is that one that recurs frequently as you read When Everything Changed, the absorbing history of feminism and American women's lives by Gail Collins, the resident editorial fount of wry Midwestern common sense at The New York Times.... What Collins does, which so pitiably few pop-history writers do, is bring the stories, the anecdotes that come to life and pull you in."―Ben Dickinson, Elle

"This is not only a fascinating record of how far women have come, it is also a missive to a new generation of women, reminding them to keep the faith."―Katherine Boyle, Booklist

"A lively account...Collins uses her great sense of revealing anecdote, engaging personalities, representative case histories, resonant stories, and startling details to defamiliarize a decade we thought we remembered, and to show how truly far American women have come in every aspect of their lives.... Collins's message is inspiring and timely, and all the techniques she employs to make this book fun to read--and impossible to deny--deserve critical praise as well as popular success."―Elaine Showalter, Progressive Book Club

"Provides a sweeping, fascinating look at modern women in our country.... It may be a history book, but When Everything Changed reads like a page-turning saga, a race through the years to learn how we got here."―Eliza Borné, BookPage.com

"I should mention that Collins is at the top of my guest list for my imaginary dinner party, the theme of which would be: 'Famous fun people I'd like to meet and talk with, but probably never will'...Readers will appreciate the exceptional detail with which Collins lays out the accepted universe of closed opportunities and limited horizons that women faced in 1960. Collins interviewed a variety of women from around the country, and it is fascinating to hear them describe a world that seems unthinkable now but which few could imagine challenging at the time....The stories that emerge are...deeply moving."―Sharon Ullman, Boston Sunday Globe

"Splendid...Collins is a masterful storyteller."―Glenn C. Altschuler, NPR.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0316014044
• ISBN 13: 9780316014045
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512