Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man

Susan Faludi

Apr 2011 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

One of the most talked-about books of last year, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Backlash now explores the collapse of traditional masculinity that has left men feeling betrayed. With Backlash in 1991, Susan Faludi broke new ground when she put her finger directly on the problem bedeviling women, and the light of recognition dawned on millions of her readers: what's making women miserable isn't something they're doing to themselves in the name of independence. It's something our society is doing to women. The book was nothing less than a landmark. Now in Stiffed, the author turns her attention to the masculinity crisis plaguing our culture at the end of the '90s, an era of massive layoffs, "Angry White Male" politics, and Million Man marches. As much as the culture wants to proclaim that men are made miserable--or brutal or violent or irresponsible--by their inner nature and their hormones, Faludi finds that even in the world they supposedly own and run, men are at the mercy of cultural forces that disfigure their lives and destroy their chance at happiness. As traditional masculinity continues to collapse, the once-valued male attributes of craft, loyalty, and social utility are no longer honored, much less rewarded. Faludi's journey through the modern masculine landscape takes her into the lives of individual men whose accounts reveal the heart of the male dilemma. Stiffed brings us into the world of industrial workers, sports fans, combat veterans, evangelical husbands, militiamen, astronauts, and troubled "bad" boys--whose sense that they've lost their skills, jobs, civic roles, wives, teams, and a secure future is only one symptom of a larger and historic betrayal.

About the author

Susan Faludi is an American journalist and author, was born in 1959. She graduated from Harvard University. In 1991, she won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. Her work can be read in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, and The Nation. She is the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America, and In the Darkroom, which won the 2016 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.