When Everything Changed

August 31, 2009
You've come a long way, baby: that's Collins's conclusion about American women, who once lacked the right to publicly wear pants and now take their place on the presidential campaign trail and the battlefield. New York Times
columnist Collins attempts a comprehensive account of the last 50 years of women's history in this sequel to America's Women,
primarily focusing on the 1960s. Giving relatively short shrift to the current generation of young women, Collins centers the bulk of her attention on the baby boom generation (to which she belongs) and leaders like NOW founder Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, as well as dozens of ordinary struggling women. The book's stronger parts include highlighting pioneers like Congresswoman Martha Griffiths, who began her political career in the 1940s and stories of laughably shortsighted sexism against Sandra Day O'Connor. Collins captures the conundrums of feminism's success (does a see-through blouse make a woman liberated or a sex object?), but the book will probably resonate most for her generational peers. 16 pages of b&w photographs.

Starred review from August 1, 2009
The impressive sequel to America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (2003).

Collins—the first-ever female editor of the New York Times, and currently an op-ed contributor—offers an enormously entertaining cultural and social history. Her extensive research weaves the compelling stories of more than 100 women, ranging in age from 20 to 80, into a larger narrative of politics, economics and sexual mores. The author chronicles the story of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the women's-liberation movement and its forerunner, the civil-rights movement, the failed struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment and the impact of Roe v. Wade and Title IX. She populates her account with dozens of well- and lesser-known female leaders, including Sherri Finkbine, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Alice Paul, Margaret Chase Smith, Phyllis Schlafly, Helen Gurley Brown and Billy Jean King. Collins paints a vivid picture of the world as it was, and as it has so radically altered life for American girls and women. Fashions, hairstyles, dating, birth control—all are grist for her mill. Without preaching, she shows the sexism that women (and men) once accepted as the norm, and she backs up her often eye-opening stories with hard facts and solid statistics. From the opening anecdote of a woman expelled from traffic court in 1960 for appearing in slacks, to the closing one of a woman fired from her job as a bus driver in 2007 for refusing to wear slacks, this an engrossing account of how not just the daily lives, but the assumptions and expectations of women have changed so much in so short a time. Collins can be deadly serious and great fun to read at the same time.

A revelatory book for readers of both sexes, and sure to become required reading for any American women's-studies course.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2009
New York Times columnist Collins latest book showcases the incredible journey of American women over the past 50 years. Collins first explores an era when women were not allowed to sit on juries in some states; she then follows the progress of the womens movement and the civil rights movement as the passion for equality caught fire across the country. On the flip side, she also delves into tensions between activists working to advance womens rights and those working to end segregation. Moving on, Collins examines the challenges women faced as they sought to excel both professionally and in their personal lives. Testimony from movement luminaries, such as Gloria Steinem and Alice Paul, is matched by observations by women whose names never appeared in newspapers. As of 2008, women were filling law and medical schools and Collins was writing about Hillary Clintons historic presidential campaign. This is not only a fascinating record of how far women have come, it is also a missive to a new generation of women, reminding them to keep the faith.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)