Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Maggi-Meg Reed
Audiobook
23 hr 55 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

A new edition of the feminist classic, with an all-new introduction exploring the role of backlash in the 2016 election and laying out a path forward for 2020 and beyond

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

First published in 1991, Backlash made headlines and became a bestselling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decadelong antifeminist backlash against women’s advances. A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Susan Faludi brilliantly deconstructed the reigning myths about the “costs” of women’s independence—from the supposed “man shortage” to the “infertility epidemic” to “career burnout” to “toxic day care”—and traced their circulation from Reagan-era politics through the echo chambers of mass media, advertising, and popular culture. 
 
As Faludi writes in a new preface for this edition, much has changed in the intervening years: The Internet has given voice to a new generation of feminists. Corporations list “gender equality” among their core values. In 2019, a record number of women entered Congress. Yet the glass ceiling is still unshattered, women are still punished for wanting to succeed, and reproductive rights are hanging by a thread. This startling and essential book helps explain why women’s freedoms are still so demonized and threatened—and urges us to choose a different future.

About the author

Susan Faludi won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for excellence in journalism and won the National Book Critics Circle’s nonfiction award for Backlash upon its original publication. She is also the author of The Terror Dream, Stiffed, and In the Darkroom, a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in biography. A former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, and The Baffler, among other publications.

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