Rebecca Traister is writer at large for New York magazine and a contributing editor at Elle. A National Magazine Award finalist, she has written about women in politics, media, and entertainment from a feminist perspective for The New Republic and Salon and has also contributed to The Nation, The New York Observer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, Glamour and Marie Claire. She is the author of All the Single Ladies and the award-winning Big Girls Don’t Cry. She lives in New York with her family.
PRAISE FOR ALL THE SINGLE LADIES
*** A Best Books of 2016 So Far select by Entertainment Weekly
***
“Fascinating, entertaining, surprising—and heartening. A brilliant
book that is also warm, funny, and a pleasure to read.”
—Katha Pollitt
"Traister is a triple threat--essayist, journalist, and
polemicist--bringing a seismic shift to light, hunting down its
implications, and showing how it changes politics, and how policy
needs to change to reflect it. Her book demands not just reading
but discussion and debate.
—Boris Kachka, Vulture
“A singularly triumphant work of women presented in beautiful
formation... Keenly mindful of race, ethnicity and socioeconomic
status…[Traister] is both deliberate and conversant in her language
of inclusion…As impressively well researched as All the Single
Ladies is...it's the personal narratives drawn from more than 100
interviews she conducted with all manner of women that make the
book not just an informative read but also an entirely engaging
one.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A well-researched, deeply informative examination of women’s bids
for independence, spanning centuries…Traister provides a thoughtful
culling of history to help bridge the gap between, on the one hand,
glib depictions of single womanhood largely focused on sexual
escapades and, on the other, grave warnings that female
independence will unravel the very fabric of the country…[she]
brings a welcome balance of critique and personal reflection to a
conversation that is often characterized more by advocacy and moral
policing than honest discovery…All The Single Ladies is arriving
just in time. This is an informative and thought-provoking book for
anyone – not just the single ladies – who wants to gain a great
understanding of this pivotal moment in the history of the United
States.”
—New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
“Powerful and convincing…we’re better off reading Rebecca Traister
on women, politics, and America than pretty much anyone else.
[Traister is] one of the nation’s smartest and most provocative
feminist voices.”
—The Boston Globe
“The enormous accomplishment of Traister’s book is to show that the
ranks of women electing for nontraditional lives…have also improved
the lots of women who make traditional choices, blowing open the
institutions of marriage and parenthood…This rich portrait of our
most quietly explosive social force makes it clear that the ladies
still have plenty of work to do.”
—Slate
“A monumental study of the political, economic, social, and sexual
consequences of the rise of unmarried women.”
—New Republic
“Lucid and well-researched…[Traister] vividly illustrates the
collective power of single women in guiding legal, economic, and
social progress and in `asserting themselves as citizens—full
citizens—in ways that American men have for generations.’ A chapter
on female friendships satisfyingly conveys the complexity of a
significant, and often dismissed, relationship.”
—The New Yorker
“Personal and relatable…[Traister’s] assessment of single women’s
sex lives is so balanced and ordinary-sounding that it becomes
extraordinary in a world where Tinder is supposedly bringing a
dating apocalypse…I’ll swipe right on that message any day.”
—Washington Post
“Though Traister is no longer one of us, she retains her memories
and her empathy, as well as her feminist commitments…Drawing on,
historical and contemporary sources, as well as her own reporting,
she has produced a wide-ranging, insistently optimistic analysis of
the role of single women in American society.”
—Chicago Tribune
“I can’t begin to count the number of conversations I’ve had in my
adult life about my lack of enthusiasm to marry… Thankfully, with
the publication of Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies:
Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, I can stop
explaining and buy her book for all the busybodies in my happily
unmarried life. Traister blends history, reportage and personal
memoir to propose that the notion of marriage in American life has
been and will be written by unmarried women.”
—The Guardian (US)
“Traister’s illuminating history of women who haven’t put a ring on
it, whether by choice or by chance, is smartly placed in a larger
historical context and enriched by compelling personal
narratives.”
—Entertainment Weekly, Best Books of 2016 So Far select
“Traister is one of the sharpest journalists writing about feminism
today, and her look into the link between eras with large numbers
of unmarried women and periods of drastic social change is
absolutely riveting… It turns out the history of unmarried women in
this country is a fascinating one, which Traister recounts in
compulsively readable detail, combining facts with personal stories
from single ladies across racial and financial spectrums. What’s
left after she joyfully dismantles conservative arguments about the
death of wifely servitude is hope: `Ring on it’ or not, the paths
open to women today are varied and bright.”
—Entertainment Weekly
In this intelligent book, Traister looks at the many reasons for
choosing a patch that would have been cultural and economic suicide
50 years ago. She wants single women to recognize themselves as a
political force and to celebrate unmarried life for what it can be:
an excellent option.”
—People Magazine
“Wonderfully inclusive, examining single women from all walks of
life—working-, middle-, and upper-class women; women of color and
white women; queer and straight ones…With All the Single Ladies,
[Traister] brings her trademark intelligence and wit to bear,
interspersing her own experiences and observations with dozens of
interviews with women all over the country, plus historical
context, from so-called Boston marriages (the nineteenth-century
name for women who lived together) and the Brontë sisters to Murphy
Brown and Sex and the City.”
—Elle Magazine
“No husband, NP…In All The Single Ladies, an exhaustive examination
of independent women and how they shaped the world we live (and
date) in today, Rebecca Traister explodes the centuries-old notion
that mirage is compulsory to living a happy, fulfilled life and
reveals the inestimable power of being blissfully unattached.”
—Cosmopolitan
“All The Single Ladies is essential, careful, bold, and rigorous;
it’s a warning and a celebration, and I loved it.”
—Jezebel
“[All The Single Ladies] has the potential to become a seminal text
on female identity in the West…Traister expertly paints a modern
portrait of American life and how we got here, with an
intersectional approach that accounts for class, race, and sexual
orientation. Even more impressive is how Traister pushes a feminist
agenda without the book ever feeling like it has an agenda, or that
it's pointing the finger at the reader to make him or her feel
guilty.”
—VICE
“A well-written and unabashedly feminist analysis of the history
and current situation of single women in America.”
—Newsday
“Exploring all aspects of single life—social, economic, racial, and
sexual—Traister’s comprehensive volume, sure to be vigorously
discussed, is truly impressive in scope and depth while always
managing to be eminently readable and thoughtful.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“[Traister is] a thoughtful journalist…This fast-paced, fascinating
book will draw in fans of feminism, social sciences, and U.S.
history, similar to Gail -Collins’s When Everything Changed.”
—Library Journal
“Incorporating a lively slew of perspectives of single ladies past
and present, Traister conducts a nuanced investigation into the
sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women in America and the
opportunities available when marriage is no longer “the measure of
female existence.”…Traister is funny and fair in how she deals with
the prevalent stereotypes and remaining stigmas attached to being
an unmarried woman in society…an invigorating study of single women
in America with refreshing insight into the real life of the
so-called spinster.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Cogent and provocative…a persuasive case for why unmarried women
have grown into a potent political and social force…Readers will
also appreciate Traister's willingness to recount, with candor and
humor, experiences in her own life that fit into the larger
national story. This is a fascinating book—and an important
one.”
—Bookmark/Politics & Prose Blog
“Part social and cultural history, part anthropological and
journalistic investigation, part memoir, and total investigation
into the phenomenon and political power of single womanhood.”
—Flavorwire
“Timely and important…a significant addition to the literature of
sociology and women’s studies…Clearly this book belongs right up
there with those by Gloria Steinem, Gail Collins, and other
feminist writers who shine a light on contemporary life as few
others can.”
—New York Journal of Books
PRAISE FOR REBECCA TRAISTER
"Visionary."
--The New York Times Book Review
"One of the most powerful voices in a new generation of American
feminist writers."
--Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs
"The most brilliant voice on feminism in this country."
--Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird
"A clear-eyed, whip-smart observer of the political scene."
--Daphne Merkin, author of The Fame Lunches
"Brilliant."
--Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"Clever, caustic, [and] wickedly funny."
--Slate.com
"The heir to the tradition of Mary McCarthy and Joan Didion."
--Eric Alterman, author of The Cause
"Provocative and insightful."
--Curtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife
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