Pg. 99: Stephanie Coontz's "A Strange Stirring"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz.

About the book, from the publisher:

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 reflect their personal weakness but rather a social and political injustice.

Learn more about the book and author at Stephanie Coontz's website.

Coontz teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College. Her books include Marriage, a History, The Way We Never Were, and The Way We Really Are. She lives in Olympia, Washington.

The Page 69 Test: Marriage, A History.

The Page 99 Test: A Strange Stirring.

--Marshal Zeringue