50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution by Spillar, Katherine
Katherine Spillar
Books

50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution -- Katherine Spillar - Hardcover


A celebration of Ms.--the most startling, most audacious, most norm-breaking of the magazine's groundbreaking pieces on women, men, politics (sexual and otherwise), marriage, family, education, work, motherhood, and reproductive rights, as well as the best of the magazine's fiction, poetry, and letters. - Featuring Billie Jean King, Alison Bechdel, and Audre Lorde, among many others.

"I've been a Ms. reader since its earliest days. The magazine's bold, boundary-breaking reporting has motivated me, infuriated me, and inspired me. And now this one extraordinary book--50 Years of Ms.--captures it all." --Jane Fonda, actor and activist

"Ms.--in 1972--normalized being a woman, abortion and all. And here we are, 50 years later, needing that now more than ever." --Sarah Silverman, comedian, actor, and writer

For the past five decades Ms. has been the nation's most influential source of feminist ideas, and it remains at the forefront of feminism today, affecting thought and culture with a younger-than-ever readership (ages 16-20!).

Ms. was the first U.S. magazine to:
  • feature prominent American women demanding the repeal of laws that criminalized abortion
  • explain and advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment
  • rate presidential candidates on women's issues
  • feature domestic violence and sexual harassment on its cover, long before either was widely understood or acknowledged
  • commission and publish a national study on date rape

Here is the best reporting, fiction, and advertising, decade by decade, as well as the best photographs and features that reveal and reflect the changes set in motion by Ms., along with the iconic covers that galvanized readers.

Here are essays, profiles, conversations with and features by: Alice Walker, Cynthia Enloe, Pauli Murray, Nancy Pelosi, bell hooks, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Brittney Cooper, and Joy Harjo, as well as fiction and poetry by Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, and Sharon Olds, and many others.

Author: Katherine Spillar
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 09/19/2023
Pages: 544
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 3.06lbs
Size: 10.25h x 7.50w x 1.15d
ISBN: 9780593321560

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/01/2023 pg. 16
Publishers Weekly 07/24/2023
Library Journal 08/01/2023 pg. 99
Booklist 09/01/2023 pg. 4

About the Author
GLORIA STEINEM, writer, political activist, and feminist organizer, was a founder of New York and Ms. magazines.

KATHERINE SPILLAR is the Executive Editor of Ms. magazine and Executive Director of Feminist Majority Foundation. Spillar served four terms as President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organization for Women.

ELEANOR SMEAL is the publisher of Ms. and president of Feminist Majority Foundation which she co-founded, and its sister organization, the Feminist Majority. Smeal has been at the forefront of almost every major women's rights victory in the U.S.