A Strange Stirring : The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s ISBN: 9780465022328 Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Basic Books Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time Subjects: Social Science;
In 1963, Betty Friedan unleashed a storm of controversy with her bestselling book, The Feminine Mystique . Hundreds of women wrote to her to say that the book had transformed, even saved, their lives. Nearly half a century later, many women still recall where they were when they first read it.
In A Strange Stirring , historian Stephanie Coontz examines the dawn of the 1960s, when the sexual revolution had barely begun, newspapers advertised for "perky, attractive gal typists," but married women were told to stay home, and husbands controlled almost every aspect of family life. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, and challenging both conservative and liberal myths about Friedan, A Strange Stirring brilliantly illuminates how a generation of women came to realize that their dissatisfaction with domestic life didn't't reflect their personal weakness but rather a social and political injustice.
Stephanie Coontz is a social analyst, family historian, writer, and a professor. She teaches at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her research interests include the historical accuracy, myths, and facts that surround our present concept of traditional family values.
In her book, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Coontz disputes many of the myths about the decade of the 1950s. Her book, The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families explores new economic and social pressure put on families. Coontz is a frequent commentator on CNN and NBC news programs and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She was the keynote speaker at the Thirteenth Annual Maine Women's Studies Conference in 1998.
