The Sisterhood

Book excerpt: In this epic drama of personality and politics, passion and ambition, courage and betrayal, Marcia Cohen tells the fascinating inside story of the feminist revolution through the lives of the women who made it—and were sometimes unmade by it. Focusing on Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and Kate Millett, The Sisterhood is a revealing group portrait of the women whose ideas and actions have so profoundly transformed us all. This classic account traces the women’s movement from its quiet birth in the 1960s through its startling triumphs in the 1970s and its troubled legacy in the 1980s. Today, everything seems possible for women as they function on an equal plane with men in nearly every walk of life. But the revolution was hard won. Now the irreverent, entertaining chronicle that reveals all the well-kept secrets of feminism, with a thoughtful new foreword by the author, appears in a special edition that serves as a riveting social history, casting light on an entire era so important for women as well as men.