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When Everything Changed Paperback – Illustrated, October 21, 2010

4.4 out of 5 stars 453

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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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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Did feminism fail? Gail Collins's smart, thorough, often droll and extremely readable account of women's recent history in America not only answers this question brilliantly, but also poses new ones about the past and the present."―Amy Bloom, The New York Times Book Review

"Until now, the second wave women's movement hasn't had its big ambitious history--the equivalent to Taylor Branch's multivolume narrative of the civil rights movement....nothing as sweeping and accessible as this."―
Margaret Talbot, Slate.com's "Double X"

"Among the impressive features of Ms. Collins's book is her genial, fair-minded sympathy, her refusal to smirk at the excesses of the most radical '70s feminists or at the stance of women, among them Phyllis Schlafly, who counseled their sisters to stay home where they belonged."―
Francine Prose, New York Times

"What better time to look at American women's progress since the '60s, now that the dust has settled on the 2008 presidential election when so much was won (and lost) by women?... Gail Collins's near epic history
When Everything Changed...also captures the playfulness and humor in women's advancement."―Elizabeth Toohey, The Christian Science Monitor

"'The past is a foreign country' is the kind of hallowed quotation that's resolutely opaque until you stumble on something that drives home its emotional truth. The uncanny feeling it references is that one that recurs frequently as you read
When Everything Changed, the absorbing history of feminism and American women's lives by Gail Collins, the resident editorial fount of wry Midwestern common sense at The New York Times.... What Collins does, which so pitiably few pop-history writers do, is bring the stories, the anecdotes that come to life and pull you in."―Ben Dickinson, Elle

"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."―
Katherine Boyle, Booklist

"A lively account...Collins uses her great sense of revealing anecdote, engaging personalities, representative case histories, resonant stories, and startling details to defamiliarize a decade we thought we remembered, and to show how truly far American women have come in every aspect of their lives.... Collins's message is inspiring and timely, and all the techniques she employs to make this book fun to read--and impossible to deny--deserve critical praise as well as popular success."―
Elaine Showalter, Progressive Book Club

"Provides a sweeping, fascinating look at modern women in our country.... It may be a history book, but
When Everything Changed reads like a page-turning saga, a race through the years to learn how we got here."―Eliza Borné, BookPage.com

"I should mention that Collins is at the top of my guest list for my imaginary dinner party, the theme of which would be: 'Famous fun people I'd like to meet and talk with, but probably never will'...Readers will appreciate the exceptional detail with which Collins lays out the accepted universe of closed opportunities and limited horizons that women faced in 1960. Collins interviewed a variety of women from around the country, and it is fascinating to hear them describe a world that seems unthinkable now but which few could imagine challenging at the time....The stories that emerge are...deeply moving."―
Sharon Ullman, Boston Sunday Globe

"Splendid...Collins is a masterful storyteller."―
Glenn C. Altschuler, NPR.com

"Social history at its best."―
MiChelle Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"In her pithy, wide-ranging and readable new book, Gail Collins whisks us through nearly five decades of women's history... Famous names and familiar stories appear, but what is most compelling are the vignettes of women who would have remained obscure without the work of Collins and her research team. Through their stories we experience the rat-a-tat-tat of daily indignities--big and small--that built to a crescendo we now call the women's movement."―
Connie Schultz, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

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

"In a fascinating history, Gail Collins goes behind the scenes of the women's rights movement....
When Everything Changed provides a sweeping, fascinating look at modern women in our country. Filled with facts, court cases and legislation, the book is rich with personal anecdotes. Collins and her researchers interviewed more than 100 women for this history, and for many contemporary readers, their findings will be startling and sometimes heartbreaking.... The end of her book will make many readers swell with pride--it features updates on the lives of the interview subjects featured in the book, many of whom went on to break barriers for many years. The story their lives helped write--of American women from the 1960s to today--is inspiring and compelling."―Eliza Borné, BookPage

"Women aren't nostalgic for the old days. If anyone is, just watch a few episodes of "Mad Men" as an antidote, with its suffocated Mad Wife Betty Draper and its slapped-down Working Woman Peggy Olsen. If you prefer nonfiction, leaf through the early chapters of Gail Collins's history
When Everything Changed to those magical yesteryears when a flight attendant was weighed, measured, and hired to be a flying geisha."―Ellen Goodman, The Seattle Times

"Readers familiar with her work will recognize her eye for ironic detail in this wry, insightful and comprehensive book...there are many wonderful, triumphal moments...Collins wants us to remember how bad things were in the 1960s, and she succeeds."―
Jill Lawrence, Politics Daily

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

"Compulsively readable....Millions lived through the material Collins covers in her new book. To those who did not, it might read a little like science fiction."―
Chris Vognar, The Dallas Morning News

"Gail Collins walks you through a fascinating five decades of history that shows you just how far women have come."―
LadiesHomeJournal.com

"Riveting and remarkably thorough in its account of this tumultuous period.... Collins draws on an impressive variety of sources...and employs her engaging and accessible writing style to created a very readable history book."―
Rasha Madkour, The Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, New York Daily News

"The new must-have text for modern feminists. Her simple message to our generation: We must not take our astounding journey for granted."―
Ami Angelwicz, The Frisky.com

"Collins, whose prose is vigorous and direct, has an unflaggingly intelligent conversational style that gives this book a personal and authoritative tone all at once."―
Cathleen Schine, The New York Review of Books

"Exhilarating, accessible, and inspiring."―
Katha Pollitt, Slate.com

About the Author

Gail Collins is a columnist for the New York Times. From 2001-2007 she was editorial page editor of the paper -- the first woman to have held that position.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (October 21, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316014044
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316014045
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.28 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 453

About the author

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Gail Collins
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Gail Collins was the Editorial Page Editor for the New York Times from 2001-2007--the first woman to have held that position. She currently writes a column for the Times' Op-Ed page twice weekly.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
453 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2019
Once you start this book, you will find it hard to put down, so engagingly written is it and such a compelling story it tells. And Collins was part of that story, although she doesn’t dwell on it, for the New York Times, where she was editorial page editor for seven years (2001-2007), was one of many newspapers in this country that for decades somehow never advanced a single woman to the position of editor. It would be easy for someone like Collins, an immensely gifted writer and editor, to boil over in rage at the slights and injuries women have suffered during our own lifetimes. But she doesn’t. She is fair, open, even sunny, and the story she tells –of advances and then slippings back (think, Phyllis Shlafley and the failure of the ERA)—is fascinating and compelling.

To the question, “did feminism fail? ,” Collins’s answer would be in some ways yes, in some ways no, but what it really did was change, which is what happens to things, people and movements when they play out in the complicated stew of sentiments and happenings we call history.

“Readable” is the word that comes to mind about this book but it’s not “Readable Light.” It’s “Readable Serious” that Collins delivers. She captures the larger narrative and notes the relevant statistics but humanizes the story by giving space to the voices of individual women, some of whom appear repeatedly –first dutiful homemaker, then members of Sixties and Seventies conscious raising groups and counter-culture communes and on to their reaction Hilary’s failed run against Obama in 2008.

I was 24 in 1960. I lived through most of this stuff. Furthermore, my wife Esther was no shrinking violet when it came to women’s equality. But I learned a lot of things I didn’t know from this book. I picked it up for Esther but she took ill and never had the chance to read it before she died. I know she would have loved it. Then I decided to re-read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique --I didn’t think I’d given it a fair chance when it came out in 1963. I wasn’t against the message --I ate up de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Rather it was the style. I found it too journalistic so I stopped reading it half way through. Collins made me want to read it again.

I never thought back then how little attention male manufacturers paid to women’s needs and comfort in designing things like sanitary napkins and undergarments and what Collins reports about doctors’ attitudes toward women’s needs then and now makes my blood boil. Cathleen Schine wrote in the New York Review of Books: Collins’s “unflaggingly intelligent conversational style …. gives this book a personal and authoritative tone all at once.” She’s right. That’s it.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2014
I entered high school in 1960 so this time period and all the changes it brought is well-known to me. I put the word "nostalgia" in quotes because I certainly don't long for the return of many of the attitudes of the time. Ms. Collins writes a cogent narrative which shows how diverse threads came together to change the expectations of what a woman's life could and should be from my mother's time as a post-war bride to my teenage granddaughters' dreams for their futures. I appreciated being reminded of the journey women have been on in my adult years. I think it would be a very useful book for young women to understand the world they are living in. With renewed public arguments about "women's issues" such as birth control and abortion, equal pay, and much more, this book is timely and important.
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2014
Born in 1946 I was 20 when I was graduated with honors from "the poor man's Harvard, " Brooklyn College. The careers open to me were nurse, social worker, teacher, secretary and homemaker. The first three required commitments I was unwilling to undertake because I really didn't want any of those jobs. I never wanted to be "just" a homemaker. So I became a secretary while I figured things out. Gail tells the story of my life, and the women with whom I marched in my home town, New York. I got angry reading the things men said about and to us all over again. I cried in hurt and anger, just as I had 40 years ago. Ten years after I was graduated from college, I was graduated from law school. I am one of those feminists who made it possible for young women to now hold professional high paying jobs..and diss feminists. This was a stroll down memory lane for me. It made me furious and it made me proud. I was there, I did it, and somehow actually DID "have it all." I was a high powered very successful attorney for 35 years, having recently retired. I raised two amazing children, a boy and a girl, now a man and a woman. I've been with my 3rd husband for 38 years, married for the last 30. I knew I had done something right when my then 19 year old son corrected his friend, who had referred to a female friend as a "girl." My son explained that a girl was under 18, but at 18 she should be called a woman. This same child asked me at 6 years old if men could be doctors too. Oh how I laughed...and cried. Gail Collins is always a pleasure to read, and this is a book even more so. It was the story of my life, with a happier ending than I could ever imagined when I was told by a bank that had just hired my male friend that they hired girls only as tellers. He offered me that job. I turned it down and, nicely, told him off. Or when I finally found a help wanted ad in the Girls section (sorry Gail, you got that a little wrong: it wasn't Men and Women in the classifieds, it was Men and Girls) which ad stated"no typing required." It was at J.Walter Thompson: think "Mad Men." When I came in for my interview I was told yet again to take a typing test. I protested that the ad specifically said no typing. I was told that all girls had to take a typing test before they could be interviewed, no matter for what job. I stood up and walked out. I stood up to racism, I stood up to sexism and later on to ageism. Now I stand up for marriage equality. Straight but not narrow. Gail tells my story. It is the story of many women my age. It should be required reading for boys and girls, for young men and women. For old women and men. All should learn of from where we came and how we got where we are now. I hope to see a woman as commander in chief, and I will cry as I did when I saw an African American elected to that position. Young Men and women, stand up and be heard! There is still much to do to achieve a race blind, ethnic blind and gender blind America. Let this wonderfully written book be a roadmap as to how it can be done. We've come a long way, baby, as the woman-aimed cigarette ad proclaimed in the 70's, but we've still got a long way to go in the enduring fight for equality for all. Oh, and by the way, being a good secretary takes brains, and still is undervalued and underpaid as "women's work."
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Top reviews from other countries

Kelsi
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
Reviewed in Canada on January 14, 2014
This was the book that really got me into feminism during my second year of college. Gail Collins writes in a way that is both informative and interesting. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.