Moving the Mountain: The Women's Movement in America since 1960

by Flora Davis

Overview

Moving the Mountain tells the story of the struggles and triumphs of thousands of activists who achieved "half a revolution" between 1960 and 1990. In this award-winning book, the most complete history of the women's movement to date, Flora Davis presents a grass-roots view of the small steps and giant leaps that have changed laws and institutions as well as the prejudices and unspoken rules governing a woman's place in American society. Looking at every major feminist issue from the point of view of the participants in the struggle, Moving the Mountain conveys the excitement, the frustration, and the creative chaos of feminism's Second Wave. A new afterword assesses the movement's progress in the 1990s and prospects for the new century.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252067822
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	05/12/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	632
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Flora Davis has taught writing and journalism at the New School for Social Research and at Fordham University in New York City. She writes frequently about women's issues for national magazines.
 

Editorial Reviews

This balanced, gripping chronicle of the contemporary women's movement in the U.S. should be a standard resource for years to come. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This is an unbiased, finely detailed account of the second wave of the women's movement in America. Rarely is history so emotionally compelling as in Davis's depiction of the struggles and anger of these activist women. In part one, she chronicles the birth, submersion, and eventual rebirth of feminism; she then examines in part two such issues as women in politics, the women's health movement, and lesbian feminism. In the last section, she discusses where the current movement is and where it is going. Davis interviewed many activist women for this book, but a lengthy bibliography and thorough footnoting indicate scholarly attention to the subject. Another history of the contemporary women's movement is Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor's Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s ( LJ 5/15/87), but it focuses on the postwar era. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. (Index not seen.) See also Susan Faludi's Backlash ( LJ 9/15/91) and Paula Kamen's Feminist Fatale ( LJ 9/15/91).--Ed.-- Cindy Faries, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., University Park

Library Journal