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The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Zaslow
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 21, 2009
From the coauthor of the million-copy bestseller The Last Lecture comes a moving tribute to female friendships, with the inspiring story of eleven girls and the ten women they became.

Meet the Ames Girls: eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child's illness and the mysterious death of one member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life's joys and challenges -- and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.

The girls, now in their forties, have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. Photograph by photograph, recollection by recollection, occasionally with tears and often with great laughter, their sweeping and moving story is shared by Jeffrey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal columnist, as he attempts to define the matchless bonds of female friendship. It demonstrates how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women's lives - their sense of themselves, their choice of men, their need for validation, their relationships with their mothers, their dreams for their daughters - and reveals how such friendships thrive, rewarding those who have committed to them.

The Girls from Ames is the story of a group of ordinary women who built an extraordinary friendship. With both universal insights and deeply personal moments, it is a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffrey Zaslow is a Wall Street Journal columnist and coauthor, with Randy Pausch, of The Last Lecture, the #1 New York Times bestseller now translated into 41 languages. Zaslow attended Dr. Pausch's famous lecture and wrote the story that sparked worldwide interest in it. The Girls From Ames also grew out of one of Zaslow's columns.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Gotham (April 21, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1592404456
  • ASIN: B004MPRWNM
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Through his Wall Street Journal column and bestselling books, Jeffrey Zaslow has told the stories of some of the most inspirational people of our time.

Jeff is best known for The Last Lecture, written with Randy Pausch, which has been translated into 48 languages, and was #1 on best-seller lists worldwide. Five million copies have been sold in English alone, and the book remained on The New York Times best-seller list for more than 112 weeks.

Jeff's latest book, The Magic Room: A story about the love we wish for our daughters, was published in January 2012. The nonfiction narrative is set at a small-town Michigan bridal shop, and looks at the lives of a handful of brides (and their parents) who've journeyed to the store's "Magic Room." Details at www.magicroombook.com

In 2011, Jeff collaborated with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, veteran astronaut Mark Kelly, on their memoir, GABBY: A Story of Courage and Hope. The book received a great deal of attention, including a cover story in People magazine, and an hour-long ABC TV special hosted by Diane Sawyer. GABBY debuted near the top of the New York Times bestseller lists for both hardcovers and e-books.

Jeff's 2009 book about female friendship, The Girls From Ames, spent 26 weeks on The Times list, rising to #3. People magazine named it one of the "Ten Best Books of the Year." Lifetime Television is adapting the book for a movie.

Also in 2009, Jeff coauthored Highest Duty, the memoir of Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger, who famously landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Highest Duty debuted at # 3 on The New York Times list.

Jeff's Wall Street Journal column focuses on life transitions and often attracts wide media interest. That was certainly the case in September 2007, after he attended the final lecture of Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. Jeff's column about the talk sparked a worldwide phenomenon. Millions of people viewed footage of the lecture. Intense media coverage included The Oprah Winfrey Show and an ABC special.


Jeff is drawn to the topics he writes about because he has created a beat unlike most others in journalism. While The Wall Street Journal covers the heart of the financial world, Jeff tends to the hearts of its readers.

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists twice named him the best columnist in a newspaper with more than 100,000 circulation. In 2008, he received the Distinguished Column Writing Award from the New York Newspaper Publishers Association.

Jeff's TV appearances have included The Tonight Show, Oprah, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, The Today Show and Good Morning America.

Jeff first worked at the Journal from 1983 to 1987, when he wrote about a competition to replace Ann Landers at the Chicago Sun-Times. He entered to get an angle for his story, and won the job over 12,000 applicants. He worked at the Sun-Times from 1987 to 2001, and was also a columnist for USA Weekend, the Sunday supplement in 510 newspapers.

In 2000, Jeff received the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award for using his column to help 47,000 disadvantaged children. For 12 years, he hosted an annual singles party for charity, Zazz Bash, which drew 7,000 readers a year and resulted in 78 marriages.

A Philadelphia native, Jeff is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon, where he majored in creative writing. His wife, Sherry Margolis, is a TV news anchor with Fox 2 in Detroit. They have three daughters: Jordan, Alex and Eden.

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Customer Reviews

This is the kind of book women will want to read and discuss with their closest friends. Bingo-Karen Haney  |  16 reviewers made a similar statement
I love the story of the friendship these women share. Sarah M. Clevenger  |  17 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
110 of 118 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars 40 years of friendship March 10, 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
What first drew me to this book is the fact that I had cousins in Ames, and all through my growing up years, spent time there. It was fun to see the names of places I recognized and, upon contacting my relatives, finding out that they were friends with some of the families mentioned in the book. The personal connection aside, I found the book well done and very interesting. The author writes a column for the Wall Street Journal called "Moving On", and one piece dealing with turning points in women's friendships yielded an e-mail from one of the "Ames Girls", telling about their group of 11 who had remained friends since childhood until now, in their forties. He decided to do a year-long study of that friendship which results in this book. We get a good look at each of the girls as they're growing up and as they become adults. Amazing to me is the diversity of these women and the fact that they could all stay close for this many years. That's the beauty of the book, and of the friendship. In spite of different life philosophies, political leanings, and careers, through thick and thin (and there are plenty of life crises among them), they are always there for each other, regardless of geographic distances. Whether physically, emotionally, or both, they are there. The author does a bit of comparison with men and their close friendships, and how they differ so completely from women's friendships. But this doesn't come off as a "study". It comes off as an accolade to these women, who have been so blessed to have each other.
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135 of 150 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars A Book I Really Wanted to Like March 30, 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
In THE GIRLS FROM AMES, author Jeffrey Zaslow documents the backgrounds of a group of friends from Ames, Iowa. What's remarkable is the group's size, 11, and its longevity, more than 40 years. But what's not remarkable is the book. Zaslow manages to wring 316 pages of writing from interviews with, and conversations between, these women, and it reads like it has been wrung--from a dull topic. The women's relationships just aren't that interesting. Why? Is it the author's at-a-distance documentary style? The book's mundane topics? My thwarted expectation that I'd learn something new about friendship? I don't know. And it's not because I don't greatly value my own longstanding friendships. I rely on them.

Who might enjoy THE GIRLS FROM AMES? Men and women who live/have lived in Ames, people who enjoy reading about aspects of the agricultural Midwest, women's groups, high school classmates who are still friends several years after graduation.
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48 of 52 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars A story bigger and better than the book April 30, 2009
Format:Hardcover
When I heard the author and two of the subjects on NPR I immediately bought a copy, wondering if I would know any of the "girls." I was living and working in Ames in 1981 when their class graduated from Ames High, and sure enough, I immediately recognized one of the main characters, and had connections with the families of others. Reading the book was much like the odd dislocation that Walker Percy describes in The Moviegoer when surprised by a scene on screen that is familiar in real life. That said, Zaslow is a columnist and this is a story that needs the skills of a novelist. You can't build character by simply piling on anecdotes, and he is hampered by a lack of source material (and by an inexcusable lack of research--no evidence that he visited their old haunts or even read their yearbook), an inability to recreate a sense of place or time, what appears to be cursory interviews with a broad number of sources, and his core experience, a reunion with the main subjects in North Carolina, where there is no connection with their common roots. While the cast is not exactly War and Peace, it is difficult to keep the characters straight, an experience not aided by the author's determination to use just first names. Was Kelly the feisty one or the sassy one--no that was Cathy, or was it Karen or Karla? The fuzzy pics on the cheesy paper used in the original edition are not a plus. You do learn a bit -- who knew that Brad Pitt was "a pleasant-but-not-especially attractive journalism major at the University of Missouri"? Or that Hollywood hair dressers have a code of not gossiping about their clients--except when someone is writing a book about the friendships of 11 Iowa girls and apparently needs to spice up the flagging narration with a flurry of name dropping.... Read more ›
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34 of 39 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing read April 20, 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
This book chronicles the lives of 11 girls who became friends in their youth and have maintained that friendship over 40 years and hundreds of miles. They all came together in Ames, Iowa in the 1960s with some having met as babies in the church nursery while others joined the group later in junior high and high school. There were, and are, shifting subgroups and pairings within the group so not everyone was friends with everyone else equally. It describes how the group was formed over the years and who brought who into the group and how the evolved into who they became. It follows them from their earliest years to the present and the group is still intact (minus one member) and they still view each other as best friends even though 40 years have passed and they are geographically spread across the country.

There were several things that attracted me to this book -- I loved "The Last Lecture" by this author, I am only one or two years older than the women in this book, I was born and raised in the midwest (city of 130,000 in Indiana) and one of my first friends out of college went to Iowa State in Ames, Iowa. All that combined meant I was excited to dig in and read.

For those of you who are looking for stunning insights into the meaning of life, that is not what this book delivers. It's more of a case study of these women, their lives and their friendships. I found myself totally engrossed and finished it within twenty-four hours since I couldn't put it down. What the book did for me was to make me think about my own path and life choices and the impact (or lack thereof) of childhood friends and wonder how some friendships stay intact while others fade.
... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Are you still friends with your grade school chums?
If you are, or if you know of women who are, buy this book. I read it shortly after it came out and then was devastated to read in the WSJ that Jeffrey Zaslow had died in a car... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Furkid Mama
4.0 out of 5 stars If you are from the midwest, or a small town, you will enjoy this...
Most of what I loved about this book is that I could relate to almost everything.

There was no HUGE shocker. There was no big clamactic pinnacle. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Becky Winhaus
5.0 out of 5 stars The Girls From Ames
I truly believe Jeffrey Zaslow has hit the "nail on the head" with this book and that it should be required reading for all married men, especially those grooms-to-be. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Nana George
5.0 out of 5 stars What friendship is about
I loved this book! I have a group of 9 friends that relate so closely to this book. While it was difficult for the first quarter of the book to get everyone straight, by the end... Read more
Published 17 months ago by BombChelleMomma
5.0 out of 5 stars absolutely a great book
I just loved this book. I saw myself and my girlfriends in this book and I saw my daughter and her girlfriends from college that were more like sisters to her than college... Read more
Published 17 months ago by RobinHood
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent look at the enduring friendship of 11 childhood friends from...
This book is an endearing look into the lives of eleven girls who met during their adolescence in Ames, Iowa and have maintained a strong bond to one another ever since. Read more
Published 17 months ago by T. DeBrock
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read, but only to a point.
My reading of The Girls from Ames was prompted by three things. First I am familiar with Zazlow's columns. Read more
Published 23 months ago by M. Holmes
1.0 out of 5 stars So boring
Someone in my book club chose this book, and I did read through the entire text. From the beginning, I found it extremely dull but hoped it would become better. Read more
Published 23 months ago by laurensw
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book about friendship
This book, on the best-sellers list, is like no other I have read. One of the most interesting facts about this book is that The Girls from Ames is written by a man! Read more
Published on June 16, 2011 by Just a Mom with her thoughts
2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth all the fuss
This book was all the rage, and being familiar with Ames and a mid-western girl myself, I assumed it would be a page-turner. Read more
Published on May 21, 2011 by Joni Bonnell
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