Memoirs & Coffee Book Group to Meet

The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, January 22 at 10:30 am in the library’s Community Room.  Pat Kennedy-Grant, Readers’ Services Manager for the library, will lead the discussion of "The Good Girls Revolt” (2012) by Lynn Povich. [The author will not be present.]

The book describes the time of economic boom and social strife in the 1960s, how young women poured into the workplace, but the “Help Wanted” ads were segregated by gender and office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination.  Author Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones, landing a job at Newsweek, along with Nora Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller.  It was a top-notch job--for a girl--but it was a dead end.   In 1970, forty-six Newsweek women charged the magazine with discrimination in hiring and promotion.  It was the first female class action lawsuit--the first by women journalists--and it inspired other women in the media to quickly follow suit.

Lynn Povich was one of the ringleaders.  In "The Good Girls Revolt," she tells the story of this dramatic turning point through the lives of several participants.  With warmth, humor, and perspective, she shows how personal experiences and cultural shifts led a group of well-mannered, largely apolitical women, raised in the 1940s and 1950s, to challenge their bosses and what happened after they did.  

Gloria Steinem wrote, "The Good Girls Revolt is as compelling as any novel, and also an accurate, intimate history of new women journalists invading the male journalistic world of the 1970s. Lynn Povich turns this epic revolt into a lesson on why and how we've just begun."

Lynn Povich began her career at Newsweek as a secretary. In 1975 she became the first woman senior editor in the magazine’s history. Since leaving Newsweek in 1991, Povich has been editor-in-chief of Working Woman magazine and managing editor/senior executive producer for MSNBC.Com.

There is no charge and no sign-up is needed to join the discussion.  Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.