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When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present |  | Author: Gail Collins
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $27.99
Buy New: $16.37
as of 11/21/2009 01:39 CST details
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 104
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 0316059544
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.4097309045
EAN: 9780316059541
ASIN: 0316059544
Publication Date: October 14, 2009
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Product Description
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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
Share with your daughters and nieces November 19, 2009
Hester Lewellen (Cleveland Hts., Ohio)
If you lived through these changes yourself, you can share the experience by reading this book and as you go adding margin notes. This way you can pass on to your daughters or nieces what your personal reactions were to the events Collins describes. I found myself adding notes on my mother's experiences as well.
I didn't see mention in the book--and sort of wondered why--of the period in the 70s when suddenly the men's ivy-leagues and other all-male colleges decided they might be able to accept "co-eds." And the discrimination those co-eds faced.
 A Must-Read! November 18, 2009
Karyl Miller (San Diego, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Gail Collins books is a must-read for any woman who was there, who marched in the marches and sang the songs.
In high school we wanted to be prim and proper like Jackie Kennedy and just a few years later we were swimming naked at Woodstock. We got the pill. Steinem said "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," and thousands of us dumped our husbands and went off in search of careers and orgasms. Women wanted equal everything - especially pay (okay, we're still waiting for that one)! But the list of changes society went through are truely amazing. We made history! I am wooooo-man, hear me roar! Yay!
 And the winner is...... November 18, 2009
Book Worm (Coastal Maine)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Yes, I remember all too well when and how everything changed. I lived through its'infancy in a hotbed of liberalism. Never much of a mainstreamer, I watched it unfold from the sidelines and couldn't help but feel a twinge of dread. It just seemed like too much all at once. I cringed as the wealthy wives of suburbia burbled about really seeing their vaginas for the very first time as they all sat in a circle at their latest consciousness-raising meeting, mirrors and flashlights in hand, panty girdles having been burned in a backyard ritual. Think I'm joking? The foolishness that becomes the hallmark of every great ground-breaking cultural movement did not pass this one by. Yes, feminism has traveled the spectrum from the sublime to the ridiculous, but nearly half a century later we are beginning to see just how it shakes out long term. Historical facts do not exist. There are only opinions and perceptions. So as Collins lays out the advances of feminism, it only fair to bring in the devil's advocate -that's where I come in. I have the lumps on my head to prove it. Deep breath; here I go. Define "advances" as it applies to a materialistic technology-crazed culture run amok. Is it the two large incomes that are now required for any reasonable, and in some locales, attainable standard of living? Is it $500,000 three bedroom tract homes? Is it empty-nester baby boomers rolling down the road in houses on wheels towing SUV's sporting stickers bragging about how they are spending their children's inheritance? Having come from a childhood where homes had only one breadwinner and one vehicle and Mom still baked cookies, I have to ask myself just how all this liberation has really improved the quality of life of the average American-all Americans. It's easy to put the icons of feminism on a pedestal and celebrate their obvious accomplishments. But how about the contrast between these relatively few icons (usually already wealthy and privileged) and the ever increasing groundswell of their impoverished sisters struggling to do it all and never quite making it? Bummer. That doesn't make for very entertaining storytelling. But it's closer to the reality of the situation. There are more poor and homeless PEOPLE (the fallout of all this liberation has hit BOTH genders hard) than ever before. Hard work and a frugal lifestyle used to allow most of us to live modestly but comfortably. Then the job market began to open up for women. "You know, with both of us bringing home a paycheck, we could really get ahead of the game." Indeed, the predominant tangible symptom of feminism was the stampede of haus fraus into the workplace. Enter polarization - either join the ranks of the "haves" or get left behind in the ghetto of shrinking economic opportunities and escalating expenses. I've watched it happen first hand to people that I know. One particular couple married as dirt-poor farmers. She was one of the first to enter the ranks of women with three jobs - wage-earner, housewife and mother. They saved and invested. Now a wealthy widow sitting on millions while her grandchildren sweat their rent and job security, she can't figure out why they just can't seem to get with the program. I would have liked to have seen Collins take a more balanced approach to "the Great Cause" (I need a break from feminism, even from its' name). The Cause has been really hard on men, and that includes our own children. I remember my own son's embarrassment and confusion when a liberated woman with an armload of groceries growled, "I'm not helpless" and nearly knocked him over as he stepped up to open the door for her. He was only trying to be the helpful human being he was taught to be. That same son, now in his thirties, tells me that the women of his generation are a horror. The men of his generation huddle in groups for protection from them and generally avoid them out of fear. Sounds like lots of lonely people to me. My own generation isn't much different. The little old couples that took care of each other to the end no longer exist. As we enter the winter of our lives, record numbers of us are alone. As we succumb to the ravages of old age, societal resources will be stretched to the limit. As far as pushing for more changes, more so-called reforms, maybe it's time both genders and all ages took a break from all this endless pushing and shoving and just spent some time together achieving a balance-a kinder, gentler man and woman. Turn off the machines - take a walk, play a game, go play at the beach. The enthusiasm of many of the staunch proponents of feminism is admirable, but perhaps it is time to slow down and turn down the volume on the whole gender issue and remember that ultimately we're still the same species.
We are all connected! November 16, 2009
A. Grassini (Austin, TX)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
How soon we forget how far we have come! This beautifully written book is a must read for all women under 45. I had no idea that my own mother who identified with the "sisterhood of the travelling pantsuit" could not have worn pants in public back in 1960...and that's just the beginning. This book is deeply engaging. Will make a great Christmas present for your sisters and daughters everywhere.
 One star to get people's attention! November 13, 2009
KenEdw (Oregon)
0 out of 35 found this review helpful
The book does a very good job of telling what women have accomplished in the past 50 years. Yes, they have, and I raised four very successful daughters and they are all accomplished and successful, three married, two with children, and one still single and a teacher in Alaska. OK, what's my beef? It is simple, YES, and am sure it will be mostly women that read this, you failed to do your basic job for society and that is to have two children each. Baby boomer women had about about 1.5 babies each, and as a result the history of western culture has been changed. In other words, without valuing children and producing them, the population of the US would be declining, and is for European American descendants in any event.
OK, I got your attention, now, without these children entering the workforce there has been a shortage of young people to take the jobs which produced a vacuum in population which has been filled by Latinos coming here illegally. Most don't look at this way, but that's really what happened. So why am I writing this? Hopefully, to get the attention of other young women and encourage them to have a couple of kids! Without women having children the culture will die. In Europe the birth rates are so low with European women that their countries will be taken over by Muslims with 50 years. Japan will cease to exist as a country in less than 75 years, no children are being born to the young women who are now paid by the government to get pregnant, as the government is so worried about population decline with a large majority of old people in the country. Who will take care of the middle aged people now if they have no children?
So, if you care about your country, yes be successful, go out and accomplish your goals like my four daughters did, but please, for the future of our country, have those two kids on average!! Think about it this way, you have made a selfish conscious decision to make money at the expense of having a family.
By the way, the book does a good job of summarizing the accomplishment of women and the competition with men that they seem so eager to surpass in wages and prestige. But at the end of your lives, if you don't have children, who is going to take care of you? All this prestige and money won't mean nearly as much as kids and grand kids, take my word for it. You can do both! My wife did!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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