Saturday, September 21, 2019

"No Stopping Us Now: A History of Older Women in America"--from beloved New York Times columnist, Gail Collins--A lively, fascinating, eye-opening look at women and aging in America

43884954. sy475



A lively, fascinating, eye-opening look at women and aging in America, by the beloved New York Times columnist.

"You're not getting older, you're getting better," or so promised the famous 1970's ad--for women's hair dye. Americans have always had a complicated relationship with aging: embrace it, deny it, defer it--and women have been on the front lines of the battle, willingly or not.

In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries. From Plymouth Rock (when a woman was considered marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age"), to a few generations later, when they were quietly retired to elderdom once they had passed the optimum age for reproduction, to recent decades when freedom from striving in the workplace and caretaking at home is often celebrated, to the first female nominee for president, American attitudes towards age have been a moving target. Gail Collins gives women reason to expect the best of their golden years.



ALSO BY GAIL COLLINS

6192234. sy475  


 

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.
 

 

Reviews

 

"A lively celebration of women's potential."―Kirkus

"Collins continues her exploration of women's history with this breezy look at the position of older women in American society. This is a diverting and certainly interesting and valuable read."―Booklist

"A lively and well-researched compendium. . . . This enjoyable and informative historical survey will delight Collins's fans and bring in some new ones."―Publishers Weekly

Praise for When Everything Changed:

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

"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

"Riveting and remarkably thorough in its account of this tumultuous period."―Rasha Madkour, Los Angeles Times

"Compulsively readable."―Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

"Gail Collins has an unflaggingly intelligent conversational style that gives this book a personal and authoritative tone all at once."―Cathleen Schine, The New York Review of Books

"Exhilarating, accessible, and inspiring."―Katha Pollitt, Slate.com

"Gail Collins is such a delicious writer, it's easy to forget the scope of her scholarship in this remarkable look at women's progress."―People


Gail Collins

Gail Collins 

Gail Collins was the Editorial Page Editor of The New York Times from 2001 to January 1, 2007. She was the first woman Editorial Page Editor at the Times.

Born as Gail Gleason, Collins has a degree in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in government from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Beyond her work as a journalist, Collins has published several books; Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics, America's Woman: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, and The Millennium Book which she co-authored with her husband Dan Collins.

She was also a journalism instructor at Southern Connecticut State University.
She is married to Dan Collins of CBS.


No comments:

Post a Comment