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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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ALL THE SINGLE LADIES

Rebecca Traister

Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation

A nuanced investigation into the sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women in America. In a provocative, groundbreaking work, National Magazine Award finalist Rebecca Traister, “the most brilliant voice on feminisism in the country” (Anne Lamott), traces the history of unmarried and late-married women in Amerca who, through social, political, and economic means, have radically shaped our nation.
In 2009, the award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies—a book she thought would be a work of contemporary journalism—about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven.

But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change—temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more.

Today, only twenty percent of Americans are wed by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960. The Population Reference Bureau calls it a “dramatic reversal.” All the Single Ladies is a remarkable portrait of contemporary American life and how we got here, through the lens of the single American woman. Covering class, race, sexual orientation, and filled with vivid anecdotes from fascinating contemporary and historical figures, All the Single Ladies is destined to be a classic work of social history and journalism. Exhaustively researched, brilliantly balanced, and told with Traister’s signature wit and insight, this book should be shelved alongside Gail Collins’s When Everything Changed.

Rebecca Traister is writer at large for New York Magazine and a contributing editor at Elle. A National Magazine Award finalist, she has written about women in politics, media and entertainment from a feminist perspective for The New Republic and Salon and has also contributed to The Nation, The New York Observer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, Glamour and Marie Claire. Traister's first book, Big Girls Don't Cry, about women and the 2008 election, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010 and the winner of the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize. She lives in New York with her family.
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Published 2016-03-01 by Simon & Schuster

Book

Published 2016-03-01 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Incorporating a lively slew of perspectives of single ladies past and present, Traister conducts a nuanced investigation into the sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women in America and the opportunities available when marriage is no longer “the measure of female existence.”…Traister is funny and fair in how she deals with the prevalent stereotypes and remaining stigmas attached to being an unmarried woman in society…an invigorating study of single women in America with refreshing insight into the real life of the so-called spinster. Read more...

A singularly triumphant work of women presented in beautiful formation.

Watch Fusion.net’s #DearNextPresident video Read more...

Powerful and convincing…we’re better off reading Rebecca Traister on women, politics, and America than pretty much anyone else.

The book’s ranking on Amazon this morning (June 10, 2016) (three months after publication!): o #9 in Books > History > World > Women in History o #17 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources o #18 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Gender Studies

The enormous accomplishment of Traister’s book is to show that the ranks of women electing for nontraditional lives…have also improved the lots of women who make traditional choices, blowing open the institutions of marriage and parenthood…This rich portrait of our most quietly explosive social force makes it clear that the ladies still have plenty of work to do.

ALL THE SINGLE LADIES is the New York Magazine cover story this week. This first serial piece is eight pages in print and the lead story on The Cut today (Feb 22, 2016) Read more...

A well-researched, deeply informative examination of women’s bids for independence, spanning centuries… All The Single Ladies is arriving just in time. This is an informative and thought-provoking book for anyone – not just the single ladies – who wants to gain a great understanding of this pivotal moment in the history of the United States.

ALL THE SINGLE LADIES is one of 23 Most Anticipated Books of 2016: [Traister is] one of the nation’s smartest and most provocative feminist voices. Read more...

Watch the Atlantic’s Animated Interview with Rebecca Read more...

Book listed on several most anticipated books-lists for 2016 BROOKLYN MAGAZINE – 2016 Book Preview: 101 Books to Read This Year CHICAGO READER –Books We Can’t Wait To Read in 2016 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY – 25 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2016 BOSTON GLOBE – 23 Most Anticipated Books of 2016 PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER – Spring Book Picks

No husband, NP…In All The Single Ladies, an exhaustive examination of independent women and how they shaped the world we live (and date) in today, Rebecca Traister explodes the centuries-old notion that mirage is compulsory to living a happy, fulfilled life and reveals the inestimable power of being blissfully unattached.

[Traister is] a thoughtful journalist…This fast-paced, fascinating book will draw in fans of feminism, social sciences, and U.S. history, similar to Gail Collins’s When Everything Changed. Read more...

Feature Interview with Roxane Gay: “Wonderfully inclusive, examining single women from all walks of life—working-, middle-, and upper-class women; women of color and white women; queer and straight ones…With All the Single Ladies, she brings her trademark intelligence and wit to bear, interspersing her own experiences and observations with dozens of interviews with women all over the country, plus historical context, from so-called Boston marriages (the nineteenth-century name for women who lived together) and the Brontë sisters to Murphy Brown and Sex and the City.”

An easy read with lots of good anecdotes, a dose of history, and some surprising statistics. Read more...

Exploring all aspects of single life—social, economic, racial, and sexual—Traister’s comprehensive volume, sure to be vigorously discussed, is truly impressive in scope and depth while always managing to be eminently readable and thoughtful.

“Newsroom” / CNN – Live Interview Read more...

Chinese (Simplified): W.E. Library, Italian: Fandango, Korean: Acanet

Paramount TV Options ‘All The Single Ladies’ From Rebecca Traister.