The Feminine Mystique (Paperback)

Description

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“If you’ve never read it, read it now.”—Arianna Huffington, O, The Oprah Magazine

Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of “the problem that has no name”: the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women’s confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire. This 50th–anniversary edition features an afterword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen as well as a new introduction by Gail Collins.

About the Author

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Betty Friedan (1921–2006), a transformational leader of the women’s movement, founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and authored many works, including The Second Stage, The Fountain of Age, and Life So Far.

Gail Collins, the best-selling author of When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, is a national columnist for the New York Times. She lives in New York City.

Anna Quindlen is an award-winning columnist and novelist. She left journalism in 1995 to write fiction full time and has published three bestsellers. She lives in New York City.

Praise For…

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Lively, astute, and ferocious. . . . The Feminine Mystique should be required reading for anyone who cares about women.

— Rachel Shteir

Brilliant. . . . [Friedan] succeeded where no other feminist writer had. She touched the lives of ordinary readers.
— Louis Menand

If you want to understand the passion that helped fire up the modern women’s movement, there may be no better place to start than with The Feminine Mystique.

— Lynn Neary