From Library Journal
In her much-anticipated second book, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Faludi follows her remarkable study of the cultural response to the women's movement in Backlash with a good hard look at American men. Long cast as perpetrators of patriarchy, men, Faludi argues, are actually suffering under the thumb of a cultural oppression similar to the one that inspired feminism's second wave. Victims of our "ornamental culture" that values (and rewards) style over substance, men are increasingly disaffected, emasculated, and frustrated. Through a number of compassionate, objective portraits of menAfrom displaced workers in a shipyard to disappointed Promise Keepers to porn stars who struggle to get hard-ons, and moreAFaludi traces the American male's fall from potent contributor to insecure narcissist. These portraits unite to present a frank picture of just how difficult it can be to be a man in America today. At the "bitter heart" of this crisis, she finds an overwhelming sense of paternal abandonment. Although her conclusion that men and women have an opportunity to move beyond an adversarial relationship to create change together won't surprise anyone who has considered the limits of the gender wars, it cannot be stressed enough. This important book is sure to spark dialog, and all libraries should have it on hand.ARebecca Miller, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
An embargo on Faludi's new study on modern male anxiety has been issued because of a first serial agreement with Newsweek. A Booklist review will run in the September 15 issue. Bonnie Smothers
From Kirkus Reviews
In this pathbreaking study of the contemporary ``male crisis,'' award-winning journalist and author Faludi solidifies her reputation first gained in Backlash (1991) as one of our most astute analysts of gender relations. Something is wrong with men. They are unhappy, angry, bewildered, and all too often violent. Conventional wisdomwhich Faludi always delights in skeweringsuggests that either men must change their individual natures to overcome this crisis or that men are victims of the undeserving: ``scheming feminists, affirmative-action proponents, job-grabbing illegal aliens.'' Faludi comes to a different conclusion. In the course of spending time with menlaid-off industrial workers, bewildered Vietnam vets, young male sexual predators, evangelical truth seekers, and many otherschronicling their thoughts, aspirations, explanations, and exasperations, she finds that men are not to blame for their current predicament, nor on the whole is some sinister other. Rather, American men of the post-WWII world have been betrayed by culture and society. Taught by fathers to assume inheritance of a world they would firmly control, it turns out they dont control it at all. Meaningful work that both established and existed within a broader social purpose is gone for all but a few. The virtues of trust and loyalty are now laughable anachronisms. All that is left of masculinity is an ornamental facade of what Faludi terms individual male ``superdominance.'' This pose of control without a reality behind it is surely a recipe for crisis. Yet it is this very pose of control that prevents men from seeing their dilemma as a human crisis of powerlessness in modern society (one women recognized long ago) and collectively acting to change their situation. Instead, they howl at the moon to recapture their masculinity or lash out at supposed enemies. In the end, the more they struggle the more tightly they are bound. This is brilliant stuff, cutting through nonsense, letting men speak for themselves and taking from their words original and compassionate insights. Bravo. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"A significant and serious work."
-- "New York Review of Books" From the Back Cover
One of the most talked-about books of last year, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Backlash now explores the collapse of traditional masculinity that has left men feeling betrayed. With Backlash in 1991, Susan Faludi broke new ground when she put her finger directly on the problem bedeviling women, and the light of recognition dawned on millions of her readers: what's making women miserable isn't something they're doing to themselves in the name of independence. It's something our society is doing to women. The book was nothing less than a landmark. Now in Stiffed, the author turns her attention to the masculinity crisis plaguing our culture at the end of the '90s, an era of massive layoffs, "Angry White Male" politics, and Million Man marches. As much as the culture wants to proclaim that men are made miserable--or brutal or violent or irresponsible--by their inner nature and their hormones, Faludi finds that even in the world they supposedly own and run, men are at the mercy of cultural forces that disfigure their lives and destroy their chance at happiness. As traditional masculinity continues to collapse, the once-valued male attributes of craft, loyalty, and social utility are no longer honored, much less rewarded. Faludi's journey through the modern masculine landscape takes her into the lives of individual men whose accounts reveal the heart of the male dilemma. Stiffed brings us into the world of industrial workers, sports fans, combat veterans, evangelical husbands, militiamen, astronauts, and troubled "bad" boys--whose sense that they've lost their skills, jobs, civic roles, wives, teams, and a secure future is only one symptom of a larger and historic betrayal.
About the Author
Eileen Stevens is a voice-over actress living and working in New York City whose voice can be heard on cartoons, promos, programs for English-language learners, and audiobooks. She has voiced Iris on Pokémon. An Earphones Award-winning narrator, she has also directed and produced audiobooks for over six years.
Christina Delaine is a successful audio book narrator who has voiced the works of several New York Times bestsellers such as Chelsea Cain and Erica Spindler. She won AudioFile Earphones Awards for her readings of Susan Wilson's The Dog Who Danced and Chelsea Cain's Kill You Twice.
Onstage, she has performed at The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, Actors Theater of Louisville, Ensemble Studio Theater and Peterborough Players. Notably, she has also acted in JEWTOPIA, the longest running comedy in off-Broadway history and the title role in ANTIGONE at both Portland Center Stage and Kentucky Repertory Theater.
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which won the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A contributing editor for Newsweek and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has written for many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Double Take, and The Nation. She lives in Los Angeles.
