Books like Life So Far by Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan’s 1963 classic uncovers the invisible barriers that kept women confined to domestic roles, sparking a cultural awakening that reshaped ideas about equality and personal fulfillment in the United States.

Michelle Obama chronicles her life from South Side Chicago to the White House, revealing the personal drive behind her public advocacy for women, families, and health.

A striking biography of Roxanne Dunbar‑Ortiz, a working‑class, part‑Indian pioneer of the 1960s women’s liberation and anti‑war movements, detailing her radical activism and outspoken challenge to mainstream feminism.

Drawing on an impressive body of new research - including Friedan's own papers - Horowitz traces the development of Friedan's feminist outlook from her childhood in Peoria, Illinois, through her wartime years at Smith College and Berkeley, to her decade-long career as a writer for two of the period's most radical labor journals, the Federated Press and the United Electrical Workers' UE News. He further shows that even after she married and began to raise a family, Friedan continued during the 1950s to write and work on behalf of a wide range of progressive social causes. By resituating Friedan within a broader cultural context, and by offering a fresh reading of The Feminine Mystique against that background, Horowitz not only overturns conventional ideas about "second-wave" feminism but also reveals long submerged links to its past.

In her diary, Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate general and aid to president Jefferson Davis, James Chestnut, Jr., presents an eyewitness account of the Civil War.

There is no one in the women's movement more renowned or pervasive in her presence, more long-lasting - or more contentious - than Betty Friedan. But what sort of person is she, really? Judith Hennessee has dug deep and come up with a story of a woman of many paradoxes, a woman who survived disastrous moments and who continues to this day to lead, to find new energies and crusades. Before feminism, she focused her activism on fighting for the cause of labor unions against big business. She wanted to be an actress. Her female friends notwithstanding, she was known as the feminist who didn't like women. A champion of the family, she had a lusty and violent marriage. Her husband, Carl, was the first to realize that The Feminine Mystique would be a success - but it was the book and his wife's fame that precipitated the breakup of their marriage. NOW, the first feminist organization she founded, was never meant to be all-inclusive. Friedan envisioned it as a group that would be able to work things out with those in power. Even though she was a founder of three of the most important organizations of the women's movement - NOW, NWPC, NARAL - two of them shunted her aside. And she continually confronted Gloria Steinem, her archrival, over the movement's direction.

In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Crawford F. Sams led the most unprecedented and unsurpassed reforms in public health history, as chief of the Public Health and Welfare Section of the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in East Asia. "Medic" is Sams's firsthand account of public health reforms in Japan during the occupation and their significance for the formation of a stable and democratic state in Asia after World War II. "Medic" also tells of the strenuous efforts to control disease among refugees and civilians during the Korean War, which had enormously high civilian casualties. Sams recounts the humanitarian, military, and ideological reasons for controlling disease during military operations in Korea, where he served, first, as a health and welfare adviser to the U.S. Military Command that occupied Korea south of the 38th parallel and, later, as the chief of Health and Welfare of the United Nations Command. In presenting a larger picture of the effects of disease on the course of military operations and in the aftermath of catastrophic bombings and depravation, Crawford Sams has left a written document that reveals the convictions and ideals that guided his generation of military leaders.