Jewogle - Susan C. Faludi

Biography:

Susan C. Faludi (born April 18, 1959) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of two well-known books. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1991, for a report on the leveraged buy-out of Safeway Stores, Inc., a report that the Pulitzer Prize committee thought showed the "human costs of high finance".

Published books:

Faludi, Susan (October 1, 1991). Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Crown. ISBN 0517576988.
Backlash argued that the 1980s saw a backlash against feminism, especially due to the spread of negative stereotypes against career-minded women. Faludi asserted that many who argue "a woman's place is in the home, looking after the kids" are hypocrites, since they (or their wives) are exactly like the women they are criticizing. This work won her the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction in 1991.
Faludi, Susan (October 1, 2000). Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0380720450.
In Stiffed Faludi analyzes the American man. She argues that while many of those in power are men, most men have little power. American men have been brought up to be strong, support their families and work hard. But many men who followed this now find themselves underpaid or unemployed, disillusioned and abandoned by their wives. Changes in American society have affected both men and women, Faludi concludes, and it is wrong to blame individual men for class differences, or for plain differences in individual luck and ability, that they did not cause and from which men and women suffer alike.
Faludi, Susan (October 2, 2007). The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 0805086927.
In The Terror Dream Faludi analyzes the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in light of prior American experience going back to insecurity on the historical American frontier such as in Metacom's Rebellion. Faludi argues that 9/11 reinvigorated in America a climate that is hostile to women. Women are viewed as weak and best suited to playing support roles for the men who protect them from attack. The book was called a "tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned work that gives feminism a bad name" by the New York Times principal book reviewer Michiko Kakutani

However, the majority of reviewers disagreed with Kakutani, including:

“In a Susan Faludi book… you can be assured that the idea will be every bit as fetching and dashing as any fictional character you can name. A first rate journalist, she backs up her theories with research, with rigorous analysis, which makes her work the opposite of the usual run of ‘idea’ books... The Terror Dream is an ambitious engagement with a provocative idea.” —The Chicago Tribune

“Any list of important books about that dark day will now have to include Faludi’s sharp and spirited account of gender politics in the feverish aftermath. Her overall argument is powerful, convincing and very much in need of articulation by a bestselling author who can commandeer a public pulpit.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Susan Faludi’s must-read new book… is a lively, important argument, a discussion highly worth having as we wake from our own terror dream.” —Francine Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine

“A relentless reporter, an unapologetic feminist, and a brilliant scourge… feminism is her compass and her lens, her furnace and her fire. Feminism has made possible this splendid provocation of a book, levitating to keep company with Hunter Thompson’s fear and loathing, Leslie Fielder’s love and death and Edmund Wilson’s patriotic gore.” —John Leonard, The New York Times Book Review

“Faludi’s third book provides an unexpected but incisive assessment of the post-September 11th era.” —The New Yorker

“Faludi’s talent, though, isn’t just reflecting the zeitgeist; her ideas often shape the dialogue.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Compelling… The Terror Dream not only instructs the reader in how to parse the often puzzling turns in the media and popular culture since 9/11, but also reveals a deep and abiding narrative that has lain underneath the very conception of how we view ourselves as ‘Americans.’” —Kelly Mayhew, The San Diego Union-Tribune

Life and career:

Faludi was born in Queens, New York in 1959 and grew up in Yorktown Heights, New York. Her mother was a homemaker and journalist and is a long-time NYU student. Her father is a photographer who had emigrated from Hungary, a survivor of the Holocaust who molested her and bashed her mother. She graduated from Harvard University in 1981, and became a journalist, writing for The New York Times, Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Jose Mercury News, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Throughout the eighties she wrote several articles on feminism and the apparent resistance to the movement. Seeing a pattern emerge, Faludi began to write Backlash, which was released in late 1991. She now lives with fellow author Russ Rymer.