"But I'd heard a lot about it, not only from the conversation that was going on - it was a very provocative best-seller in 19 - but also even before that from my own mother," Coontz tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. It was only after an editor suggested that she write about The Feminine Mystique that Coontz, the author of several popular books about marriage and family, realized she had never picked up the book that made American housewives realize they could "grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings." Though it initially sold more than 3 million copies, the book had never reached the shelf of social historian Stephanie Coontz. "With its impassioned yet clear-eyed analysis of the issues that affected women's lives in the decades after World War II - including enforced domesticity, limited career prospects and, as chronicled in later editions, the campaign for legalized abortion, The Feminine Mystique is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century." "It ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world," wrote Margalit Fox. In Betty Friedan's obituary, The New York Times described the publication of her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique as a pioneering moment in American history.
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