This book has arrived just in time for the 2008 election. Along with the PBS program, "Bush's War", this should be required reading for all voters. We can change the future but we must understand the past. Thank you again Susan for your excellent analysis.

In "The Terror Dream" Susan Faludi writes, "A culture forges myths for many reasons, but paramount among them is the need to impose order on chaotic and disturbing experience--to resolve haunting contradictions and contain apprehensions, to imagine a way out of darkness." Throughout her book she presents a fascinating argument detailing how from the time of the Puritans, through the age of the wild frontier, to the era of the John Wayne archetype, American mythmakers--journalists and book publishers in particular-- have mythologized the 'heroic' male and consigned women to the role of frail 'victim' amidst the background of national anxiety or tragedy. Faludi skillfully presents a well-researched look into the Puritan view of the importance of being weak before God and how captivity was seen as a way to strengthen that aspect of their faith and character. Faludi introduces the reader to the 'captivity narrative' which was popular at the time and featured such heroines as Mary Rowlandson, who survived and escaped captivy from the Indians.

In the era of the wild frontier, however, the image of the rugged, solitary, independent frontiersman, best embodied by Daniel Boone, who fiercely decried the exaggerated image of him put forth by his contemporaries, become dominant and was made so by an increasing number portrayals of poor, defenseless women. Indians were made out to be the bad guys and I thought it was interesting how Faludi pointed out the similarities between 9/11 and the execution of nearly 300 Native American Indians in 1862. Faludi notes that in each crisis, society reacted in a way that did not allow a discourse to exist. The literary critic Kenneth Burke once wrote that, "History is an endless conversation." In the case of the 1862 execution of the Indians and the days immediately following 9/11, there was only a monologue. I did not know that very few women were allowed to contribute to Op-Ed sections of newspapers right after 9/11. Why? I was surprised to learn that some people reacted to 9/11 by saying, 'Well, this blows feminism right off the map!' Faludi rightfully questions the relation between feminism and the horrific events of 9/11.

It is a shame that people will most likely never know about the heroic exploits of Cynthia Ann Parker or Hannah Duston, but I am glad that there are people like Susan Faludi who will remind us that history and the mythmakers have overlooked figures who play such important roles in rejecting gendered stereotypes.

This is an excellent book and like many good books, it kept me thinking, even when I was not reading it. I am sure some people will not agree with everything she writes, but her argument deserves to be considered.

Being a long-time Faludi fan, I was not quite sure if I wanted to read a book about 9/11, not because I had been traumatized by the event or anything, but I was unsure that I would find a book that looked at all of the complex views of such a complex event. However, I found, as usual, Faludi's insight into the propagation of the Male-as-Hero Myth and the Female-as-Victim/Weak Myth to be an intriguing lens through which to look at 9/11. This books continues, in a way, the material that the author brought to BACKLASH, that women in a certain context can be subjugated or oppressed, depending on the need of those in power (in tis case, the media, and by extension, politicians). Faludi adds to the age-old paradigm of women as either virgins or whores; now they are also victims, even when they really aren't. Clearly there were heroines of 9/11, but why have they been obscured? One reviewer of this book actually proves Faludi's point about blaming feminism for being crybabies rather than being "Americans". I hate to be the one to burst anyone's bubble, but women are Americans, too, and they have every right to assert their position as participants in this Great Experiment, especially when they are purposely being erased by conservative pundits and the sexist media. I cannot wait for this book to come out in paperback so that I can put this as required reading on my college syllabus.

JUST WHAT THE TITLE SAYS.
AMAZING HOW THE FEMINISTS ARE UPSET ABOUT 9/11 AND WHAT HAPPENED "TO THEM" INSTEAD OF WORRYING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO US AS IN U.S

Faludi makes two claims in her latest blockbuster: that there has been a recent assault on the freedom and independence of American women; and that this assault has been a reaction to the 9/11 attacks.

Neither claim stands up to much scrutiny.

The idea that images of womanhood in the USA have reverted to `Doris Day' or `Betty Crocker' stereotypes is astonishing. Hilary Clinton neck and neck with Barack Obama in the race to the White House, Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of state, women in prominent roles in the media and on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq it is frankly unbelievable that women are being systematically 'demonised' unless they behave in `undemanding, uncompetitive, and most of all dependent' ways. Faludi also seems to inhabit an America where TV series such as `Alias', `Cold Case', `Standoff', `The Closer', `Damages', `Bones' and the `CSI' franchise have not been broadcast.

The position of women in American society has never been more powerful, and the images of women in the media have never been more positive: part of the reason, in fact, for the USA becoming the target of attacks by misogynistic fundamentalists. Bafflingly, the misogyny of the 9/11 attackers and their supporters are ignored - but that would involve widening the scope of the book to address global concerns beyond Faludi's ethnocentric focus.

Since the first part of her thesis - that the position of women has taken a significant downturn - does not stand up, it's hardly worth examining the second claim: that this is a result of 9/11.

If there *had* been a `backlash' against women due to America's weakened self-image this would contradict her earlier book `Backlash', which `found' an identical situation for American women when America was at it's strongest: an imperial power basking in it's victories over all competition. It's illogical to claim the same result from opposite causes. Nor is her argument that the `rescue narratives' presented in the media worthy of serious consideration. The view that these hark back to a myth of the frontier in which white women were kidnapped by native population essentialises these narratives as uniquely *American* when in fact such rescue myths are almost universal and date back many thousands of years. Faludi's claim seems to rest almost entirely on an analysis of the 1956 John Wayne film, `The Searchers'.

Faludi came into much feminist criticism over her previous book, `Stiffed', which wallowed in male victimhood. Here Faludi is attempting to reposition herself once again as champion of female suffering; but this book exploits the uncertainties of 9/11 and systematically devalues the genuine gains of the feminist movement.

The contemporary American political climate is particularly informed and shaped by race and gender because the top contenders for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential campaign are a white woman and a black man. These demographic realities are simultaneously obvious, important and ignored. What is troubling is not that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama may very well become president, but that while the media appears to be more-or-less self-correcting in filtering-out racism in its coverage of Obama's campaign, it is consistent in its sexist coverage of Clinton's campaign. Why? Faludi's "The Terror Dream" offers a coherent and mature perspective that suggests, if not a resolution of this paradox, then at least further understanding of why it exists. That is a beginning. Read this book before you vote.

Susan Faludi begins "The Terror Dream" with a tantalizing tale: In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, several (unrelated) adolescent girls turned up at NYC-area hospitals suffering from a bizarre choking disorder. Although doctors could find no physical evidence of any obstruction, the girls were convinced that they'd inhaled human body particles or debris from the World Trade Center.

Meanwhile, dozens of other NYC residents were submitting their dream journals to a "clearing house" group that was studying the psychological impact of the terrorist attacks. Many of those dreams shared a common theme: impotence in the face of disaster, helplessness in the face of challenge.

Now I was completely hooked. Where would Faludi take this amazing narrative?

Unfortunately, "The Terror Dream" quickly devolves into an angry diatribe against right-wing nut cases like Jerry Falwell and the media cognoscenti who fell for Karl Rove's manipulation. What a shame! Instead of pioneering insights, we get the same old rant about how much America hates feminism. Instead of prescient analysis of our collective consciousness post-9/11, we get boring statistics on male vs. female column inches in the Washington Post. (Jeepers! The percentage dropped from 24% one month to 21% the next month. What's next? Witch trials on the village green?)

The basic theme is this: Following the attacks, America regressed to an earlier psychological mindset based on the "heroic male rescuer" mythology of the frontier, John-Wayne movies and the 1950s. Right wing leaders stoked the fires of fear to accelerate this massive shift in our psychological landscape. Strong working women suddenly abandoned all interest in their careers to become placid suburban "security moms." Personal freedom wilted on the altar of virility. Americans raced to emulate Beaver Cleaver and My Three Sons.

Unfortunately, there's a problem with this analysis: It didn't happen, at least not in the mainstream work-a-day world of the average U.S. citizen. Faludi's analysis is based on an incredibly thin slice of American society -- primarily the bloviating nonsense of political pundits and overpaid news columnists in major cities. Over and over again, she cites statistics from magazines like The Nation, The National Review, Commentary and The Weekly Standard. She quotes back-biting barbs from the NY Post, American Spectator and the New Republic. Somebody attacks Susan Sontag and it's like the McCarthy Hearings all over again!

Ms. Faludi -- almost no one in mainstream America reads those magazines, and while you may think these so-called "opinion leaders" shape the national spirit, you're wrong. Check the statistics: More people watch "Dancing with the Stars" than read all of those publications combined.

In the end, Faludi's book is profoundly disappointing. What a shame for an author with such talent and intelligence. Perhaps another writer like Karen Armstrong or Jim Dwyer could tackle this topic with a more open mind -- and a much broader list of sources.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I began reading "The Terror Dream" in print, then switched to the audio version to make better use of my drive time. Both versions are essentially the same, text-wise.

Susan Faludi's detailed evidence of the preference for fantasy over fact - past and present - illuminates the on-going aftermath of 9/11. Myths concocted in the earliest birth pangs of the USA, she shows, persist stubbornly to the present day: the damsel in distress and the male rescuer/protector. It is not hard to extrapolate from Faludi's case to the hidden motives of current US foreign policy.

The August 6, 2001, "Bin Laden Determined To Attack In The U.S." memo most noteworthy, the George W. Bush administration ignored over fifty warnings regarding what turned out to be the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Yet as journalist Susan Faludi's book THE TERROR DREAM tells us, instead of holding the Bush White House accountable for its failure to protect the country too many Americans reached for fiction, not facts, letting the corporate media sell them idea of real-life John Wayne characters as an answer, as if one person could ride into town and shape up everything while we cower behind the saloon doors.

Of course, many if not most Americans knew in their hearts that Bush was aware of the 9/11 plan, not bothering to act. But as THE TERROR DREAM recalls, the post-9/11 corporate media babble about the need for men to be manly and for women to get back in the kitchen - no, make that get tied to the railroad tracks by Snidely Whiplash so Dudley Do-Right can rescue them - you can see why the noise machine drowned out clear thinking. With fear and confusion already competing with better judgment after the hijacked planes hit New York City and Washington, D.C., it was no surprise to see people embrace the silly simplicity of the corporate media's anti-female, pro-macho man baloney.

One of THE TERROR DREAM's most impressive passages takes you to the days when men were purportedly as manly as the post-9/11 hyperbole would have them today. Yet as author Faludi reports, even then women did a lot more than some may realize, and certainly more then their men were doing. But American culture and corporate media continue celebrating Davey Crockett more than Hannah Duston, getting it wrong as usual.

Read THE TERROR DREAM.

The August 6, 2001, "Bin Laden Determined To Attack In The U.S." memo most noteworthy, the George W. Bush administration ignored over fifty warnings regarding what turned out to be the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Yet as journalist Susan Faludi's book THE TERROR DREAM tells us, instead of holding the Bush White House accountable for its failure to protect the country too many Americans reached for fiction, not facts, letting the corporate media sell them idea of real-life John Wayne characters as an answer, as if one person could ride into town and shape everything up for us while we cower behind the saloon doors.

Of course, many if not most Americans knew in their hearts that Bush was aware of the 9/11 plan and simply didn't bother to act. But taking us down Bad Memory Lane, THE TERROR DREAM recalls the post-9/11 corporate media babble about the need for men to be manly and for women to get back in the kitchen - no, make that get tied to the railroad tracks by Snidely Whiplash so Dudley Do-Right can rescue them. With fear and confusion already competing with their better judgment after the hijacked planes hit New York City and Washington, D.C., it was no surprise to see people embrace such silliness as an answer, especially as the corporate media constantly repeated the same anti-female, pro-macho man baloney.

One of THE TERROR DREAM's most impressive passages takes you to the days when men were purportedly as manly as the post-9/11 hyperbole would want them today. Yet as author Faludi reports, even then women did a lot more than some may realize, and certainly more then their men were doing.

Read THE TERROR DREAM.

The Terror Dream is Susan Faludi's best book yet. She continues her exploration of American misogyny (which began with Backlash and continued with Stiffed) - and she explores the link between US male chauvanism and the present War Without End. Faludi also explores a little known genre of American literature - the Indian abduction story - which has influenced so much of modern culture, but has gone largely unexamined. I would have to strongly recommend that you buy The Terror Dream.

First, let's talk about the writing. Faludi is a brilliant writer. She could write about grass growing and make it a great read. There were times, reading her book, where I just had to stop and digest how well she puts things. A number of times, thoughts that she wrote with the beauty of Rumi came to mind.

Now, to the content of the book. Faludi submits a premise which she characterizes by a concept we learn in basic biology-- "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." And in her book, she calls the beginning narrative of the book Phylogeny.

The German zoologist, Ernst Haeckel, suggested, in this theory, the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny means that as over the short time span of nine months, a fetus, in the womb, goes through ontogenetic phases of development, it recapitulates the stages of development we see as we go up the evolutional scale-- phylogenetically, that took billions of years to develop.

So we start, in biology, with single celled, then microscopic organisms, then fish, amphibia, with tails, mammals with tails, until we reach the anthropoid stage.

Faludi suggests that as a nation, we are now recapitulating our early evolutionary stages.

She says, "Haeckel's hypothesis retains a metaphorical power in the realm of cultural history. The ways that we act, say, in response to a crisis can recapitulate in quick time the centuries-long evolution of our character as a society and of the mythologies we live by. September 11 presented just such a crisis..."

In her beginning section, called ONTOGENY, She does a superb job documenting how, after the 9/11 terrorist attack, there were no obvious heroes. No brave surviving rescuers, no brave fighters, no people who bravely dug through the rubble to discover survivors. It happened so fast, all the rescuers who came to the site either died or got there too late.

So the nation, the media-- had to come up with heroes. And they chose pregnant women who lost their mates in the attack. To make this work, the media and right wing groups massively attacked the idea of strong women. Even the fashionistas made frilly the fad.

The fact was that women had played as much a role in rescuing and dying as men. But the strong women who were there, at the WTC site were marginalized and ignored, or even put down and attacked. Their strength didn't fit the STORY that was being told, being etched into stone by the media.

Faludi gives example after example-- in the media, in the fire department, in fashion-- how this attack on women relentlessly took place-- all to serve to make men feel bigger and stronger.
She writes, "What mattered was restoring the illusion of a mythic America where women needed men's protection and men succeeded in providing it. What mattered was vanquishing the myth's dark wrin, the humiliating "terror-dream" that 9/11 forced to the surface of the national consciousness. Beginning with the demotion of independent-minded female commentators, the elevation of "manly men" at ground zero, and the adoration of widowed, pregnant homemakers-- that is, a cast of characters caught up in the September 11 trauma-- the myth quickly rippled out to counsel- and chastise-- the nation at large. Most particularly its women.

Faludi mentions how the "Jersey Girls" strong women who took on president Bush and the congress, demanding a 9/11 inquiry and demanding that Bush and Cheney testify, were attacked as shrill. She reminds us how Rudy Giuliani chided them that they had to "trust our government." And the Wall Street Journal and other media complained of Jersey Girl fatigue. (I had a chance to meet and later correspond with the Jersey girls. They were heroic, in the true sense of the word. )

After solidly describing the "terror dream" and the myth that was created, or, perhaps, more accurately, resurrected, Faludi takes us back, in her Phylogeny section of the book, to show how early on, strong pioneer women were marginalized, how the books and stories about brave women, the statues were re-told and re-"visioned."

Because, back in the early days of the settling of America, when pioneers lived in log cabins, they were attacked by the terrorists of the time-- the American Indians, who would raid a house, burn it, kill the men and kidnap the women. Some women bravely fought back-- successfully. Others adapted, effectively and happily. But those events created stories of weak, ineffective men. That couldn't be.

So writers actually changed the stories, making the women weak and resurrecting the men who had run away, making them the strong heroes. Back in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, American men re-wrote history to create stories of weak, helpless women.

Putting the Salem witch trials into context, she shows that the women who were accused were independent, strong women, often widows who were not dependent upon men. Strong women were treated as insane, evil, possessed..., wrong.

I've been writing in my op-eds, for the past four years, since before the war started, that the right wing in America is engaged in a war against the feminine-- not just women, but also the feminine archetype. Jean Shinoda Bolen has written extensively about the need for women and feminine energies to make a difference (in her super book MESSAGE FROM MOTHER; Gather the Women and Save the World) Faludi brilliantly describes just how the weak, pathetic "Stupid White Men" culture that Michael Moore described in his book, of that name, how the media and the right systematically orchestrated this attack on women as strong and heroic.

She says, near the end of the book, "When an attack on home soil causes cultural paroxysms that have nothing to do with the attack, when we respond to real threats to our nation by distracting ourselves with imagined threats to femininity and family life, when we invest our leaders with a cartoon masculinity and require of them bluster in lieu of a capacity for rational calculation, and when we blame our frailty on "fifth column" feminists-- in short, when we base our security on a mythical male strength that can only measure itself against a mythical female weakness-- we should know that we are exhibiting the symptoms of a lethal, albeit curable, cultural affliction. Our reflexive reaction to 9/11-- fantastical, weirdly disconnected from the very real emergency at hand-- exposed a counterfeit belief system. It reprised a bogus security drill that divided men from women and mobilized them to the defense of a myth instead of the defense of a country."

Damn, she nails it. When I had a chance to meet John Kerry, I cryptically said to him, "don't let Bush be Viagra." I've said for years that Bush, his war, his cowboy idiocy, have all been props the boys in this myth, this terror dream have been projecting upon, so they could salvage their masculinity. Faludi dissects the apparition that infected America's soul. Having cast light upon it, there is no doubt it will no longer have the power it has previously enjoyed.

She writes, "To not understand the mythic underpinnings of our response to 9/11 is, in a fundamental way, to not understand ourselves, to be so unknowing about the way we inhabit our cultural roles that we are stunned, insensible, when confronted by a moment that requires our full awareness. To fail to comprehend the historical provenance of our reaction, the phylogeny behind our ontogeny, is to find ourselves thwarted in our ability to express what we have undergone..."

The book is a brilliant exploration of aspects of American culture we don't ordinarily think of. If you like Zinn's People's History of the United States, or if you are willing to see America with new eyes, this book could be for you.

No matter your opinion on the subject, this book is very boring and poorly written. Just a huge disapointment as far as writing skills go.

From seeing the 4 and 5 star reviews it is obvious that these are the lemmings someone as condesending as Faludi meant to read her book. Aside from being written in a very disjointed and amateurish style, this book also makes very little sense. It is sort like taking an abtract piece of art and claiming to see the Mona Lisa's image in it. Only those of lower intelligence will buy your analysis, but seeing the 4 to 5 star reviews here, there are quite a few of these simpletons around. If you have any respect for 911 you will stay far away from this book that uses that terrible event to further a political agenda by the freakish faludi.

Susan Faludi's new book advertises itself as a meditation on our culture's response to 9-11. And it is that. But I actually found the second half of the book, in which Faludi goes back in American history and traces the American myth of the helpless female, and its relation to 9-11, especially stimulating. I imagined the editor saying to Faludi: Your book is great historical and cultural criticism, but we need a contemporary hook upfront. Let's start the book with heavy-hitting 9-11 analysis, and then you can weave the historical web in the back of the book.

But I think the book might function better if you read the historical background portion of the text first, and then read the 9-11 critique. Faludi is really on her game in this book. I loved her first book from the early 1990s ("Backlash"), and this one rivals it. It's really excellent. I admire her critical eye and intelligence.

"The Terror Dream" analyzes how the media and the government manipulated the events that transpired on 9/11 (and the aftermath) so that everything be presented as a return to strict gender roles circa the 1950s and/or the Wild West. Faludi pulls out all these great quotes from the media and blogosphere (my favorite: "The phallic symbol of America has been cut off," he wrote of the World Trade Center, "and at its base was a large smoldering vagina, the true symbol of American culture, for it is the western culture that represents the feminine materialistic principle, and it is at its extreme in America") in order to show the backlash against feminism and women in general.

She points out how the overwhelming majority of those who died at Ground Zero were male, and yet the media searched in vain to find pictures of women being carried out of the ruins by strong firemen; she also points out how the rescue efforts were largely pointless, as most of the survivors walked themselves out of the building. When those male-hero stories failed to materialize, the "victims" plastered all over the media became the poor widows and little girls left behind.

Then she turns to how the government portrayed itself, going back to Westerns and stories of the Wild West, and making themselves out to be coyboys saving the nation from invaders; she goes back further in history to draw these parallels.

The whole time I was reading, I was also wondering to myself...was my head in the sand during all of this?! How could I have not noticed?! I remember specific events--such as the Jessica Lynch "rescue"--but I'm surprised that I never put two and two together as to how these stories were being presented to the public.

Still, this is not a book about victimization; rather, it's the beginning of a long-needed discussion on how the media and government draws the attention away from real issues that need to be faced.

The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, by Susan Faludi, is unsettling.

Let me start with her ending:

"When an attack on home soil causes cultural paroxysms that have nothing to do with the attack, when we respond to real threats to our nation by distrusting ourselves with imagined threats to femininity and family life, when we invest our leaders with a cartoon masculinity and require of them bluster in lieu of a capacity for rational calculation, and when we blame our frailty in 'fifth column' feminists - in short, when we base our security on a mythical male strength that can only increase itself against a mythical female weakness - we should know that we are exhibiting the symptoms of a lethal, albeit curable, cultural affliction" (p. 295).

What? And Susan Faludi can make a case for this? As it turns out, however complex this is, Faludi makes a very strong case. There is a smell somewhere in the house, and Faludi attempts to track it down.

Here is the book, in outline form.

1. There was an event we call 9/11.

2. Society at all levels responded to this event.

3. In an extraordinary reversal of the "Rosie the Riveter" phenomenon that redefined the potential for women to hold up this nation, at all levels of society and in all quarters, the post 9/11 phenomena of "manly men" and "perfect virgins" is being forced upon us in entertainment, politics, media coverage, the blogiverse, and unfortunately, journalism.

4. This will have further impacts on society.

Faludi, with the writing and analysis skills I appreciated in her book, Backlash, tackles this topic head-on. My first reaction? Guilt. I was oblivious to the broader issues here. Yet now, I wonder how I could have missed it.

The late Jerry Falwell's rant against "pagans, abortionists, and feminists" for lifting God's "veil of protection" from the US apparently had a much wider and receptive audience than I would have guessed.

Here's what Faludi says:

"In some murky fashion, women's independence had become implicated in our nation's failure to protect itself" (p. 21).

The sedition? Women's liberation "feminized" men. And feminists have emasculated our military's ability to defend our nation.

I knew it was my fault.

Women writers and speakers seeking to find meaning and lessons in the 9/11 attacks were raked over the coals. Women-authored opinion pieces practically disappeared from view. Author Barbara Kingsolver, crucified in the national press for a quote she never even said, lamented "The response was not the response you would expect toward a child. It was more like we were witches" (p. 32).

And you know how we treat witches.

There was the return of the "supermen" (aka Rumsfeld and Cheney). The women on Flight 93 were forgotten. Tributes to women firefighters were rare. Male victims in the Twin Towers were overshadowed by the wives of these victims [I certainly believe there were many, many victims].

"If women were ineligible for hero status, for what would they be celebrated" (p. 80)? Faludi argues that the role of women in the post-9/11 world was as "perfect virgins of grief."

The second half of the book is Faludi's analysis of how American society got to this point. She discusses the historical factors "predisposing" society to a world as defined by the Rush Limbaugh types.

Wait till Limbaugh gets a summary of this book.

The most surprising thing, for me, was that I needed Faludi to sharpen my eyesight. There were things going on around me that perhaps I wasn't seeing. She gives me glasses that I can use to see for myself whether a post 9/11 world is as "culture bending" as she claims.

What was missing from this book is any kind of response from those who would disagree with her premise.

So, Susan Faludi, thank you for opening my eyes. You will make many people angry. You will make some contemplative. And you will make others active.

Susan Faludi is an embarrassment. She claims to have had a prophetic dream about death on an airplane the day before the attacks (ugh), then boldly goes on to interpret the events through her self-absorbed frame of endless victimization. Leave the prophecies to psychotics like Muhammad and Jim Jones. Truly rueful is her inane attempt to defend her thesis that 9/11 became an attack on women, vis-à-vis, media emphasis on men, among other things. Her metaphoric use of 100 year old, outdated recapitulation theory, showed just how weak, poorly informed, poorly researched (actual research, there's a thought for the gender feminists), and poorly thought-out her book turns out to be. She probably saw the Marxist Paleontologist S.J. Gould's book title "Ontogeny and Phylogeny, and, wondering what it meant, looked it up and thought recapitulation a cool idea. She didn't bother to read Gould's book, naturally, wherein the theory is thoroughly debunked for the umpteenth time by an evolutionary scientist.

When pigs take wing I'll read another lugubrious Faludi book. I read Backlash as an undergraduate, convinced as I was at the time that feminism allowed room for open-minded, smart, reasonable, compassionate, people who were simply supportive of equality and pluralism. Since the 80s though, I and untold thousands of others have dropped the feminist label, not wanting to of be confused with the dupes of intellectually bankrupt gender theory. Faludi and her ilk have been disastrous for feminism. As a life-long, third generation equity feminist, I can only hope that gender theory continues its slide into oblivion. Outside of inbred women's studies departments, and a smattering of other resentful whiners in the humanities and social sciences, it's fortunately dying. The academy can be a painfully slow. B.S. detector, but winnow it does.

Thanks, I suppose are due. Faludi has provided another nail in the coffin of gender feminism. That's ending on a positive note, at least. Anyone who wants to be riveted by a book from a strong woman, run as fast as you can away from this book; go instead and try Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Susan Faludi is an embarrassment, an academic hack, and a gender-obsessed narcissist. She claims to have had a prophetic dream about death on an airplane the day before the attacks (ugh), then boldly goes on to interpret the events through her self-absorbed frame of endless victimization. Leave the prophecies to psychotics like Muhammad and Jim Jones. Truly rueful is her inane attempt to defend her thesis that 9/11 became an attack on women, vis-à-vis, media emphasis on men, among other things. Particularly painful was her metaphoric use of 100 year old, outdated recapitulation theory, showing just how weak, poorly informed, poorly researched (actual research, there's a thought for the gender feminists), and poorly thought-out her book turns out to be. She probably saw the Marxist Paleontologist S.J. Gould's book title "Ontogeny and Phylogeny, and, wondering what it meant, looked it up and thought recapitulation a cool idea. She didn't bother to read Gould's book, naturally, wherein the theory is thoroughly debunked for the umpteenth time by an evolutionary scientist.

When pigs take wing I'll read another lugubrious Faludi book. I read Backlash as an undergraduate, convinced as I was at the time that feminism allowed room for open-minded, smart, reasonable, compassionate, people who were simply supportive of equality and pluralism. Since the 80s though, I and untold thousands of others have dropped the feminist label, not wanting to of be confused with the dupes of intellectually bankrupt gender theory. Faludi and her ilk have been disastrous for feminism. As a life-long, third generation equity feminist, I can only hope that gender theory continues its slide into oblivion. Outside of inbred women's studies departments, and a smattering of other resentful whiners in the humanities and social sciences, it's fortunately dying. The academy can be a painfully slow. B.S. detector, but winnow it does.

Thanks, I suppose are due. Faludi has provided another nail in the coffin of gender feminism. That's ending on a positive note, at least. Anyone who wants to be riveted by a book from a strong woman, run as fast as you can away from this book; go instead and try Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Who wouldve know that the stewardesses on the flight 93 had boiled water to toss onto the terrorists? Not many people as the main focus was on the male heros, the male fireighters, (even though they had women firefighters)and male heros on flight 93. Very eye opening. Read it, as its essential to know the real story behind Americas most monumental event in our countries existence.

First things first, I commend Faludi, as always, for her writing style. Faludi's journalism background has made her books very readable and her latest is no exception. Those who fear a long-winded book full of academic jargon need not be afraid. This is vintage Faludi.

Second, a previous reviewer has dismissed the argument of this book that it's just human nature the way people respond to such crises. Faludi goes to show us the opposite: human nature includes a survival instinct within us all, male or female but too often, other forces and the need to create heroes brings up a divide between men and women, casting the former as heroes and the latter as the victimized in need of saving. Perhaps this isn't a new argument, but Faludi brings it new life by comparing the post-9/11 climate to earlier periods in the history of the United States. I had heard of many of the male archetypes referred to here, the Daniel Boones, the Natty Bumppos but I have never read many captivity narratives and to me, this was new ground.

I could have used a bit more in the beginning when Faludi discusses Susan Sontag and Barbara Kingsolver. What those writers said after 9/11 is never quoted in full; I admit feeling a little angry at their comments in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, not because I was bloodthirsty but because they seemed the words of apologists and ill-timed. Then again, that was my emotional response to a day that still haunts me and I'll never be able to think rationally about it, but it would also cause me to miss Faludi's point: it's not so much what they said as the reaction to the women who spoke out as opposed to male commentators who said similar things yet were ignored by the press.

I recommend this book, whether you agree with it or not. As interesting as the first section of the book is, it's the second that held my interest best. This book will undoubtedly anger some, but it's worth reading and discussing, adding to an increasing lists of polemics about the current state of the union.

I'd hoped that this woman had disappeared, but here she is again, like recurring rash. In this ready-for-the-remainder-table book, she sums up the fear, panic, callous political manipulation and admittedly embarrassing media pigfest that followed 9/11 as a sort of primal rebirth of our nation. According to her, we are all supposed to have been expressing our hardwired need to return to a world where men are men, women are protected, and bad people are sought out and punished -- a world, she opines, like that experienced by the original "settlers" of the New World. The problem is, history doesn't conform to her premise. Nor does the political climate post 9/11, in which some of the more effective voices against the Bush machine have been female. If the evil Mass Media has been pushing back feminism for the last half dozen years, how should one explain the (puzzling to me, a woman) huge success of Hillary Clinton? Faludi holds on for dear life to the "myth" of Jessica Lynch, as if that liferaft can save her weak book from sinking to the murky depths of bad gender sort-of-academia, where it belongs. It's true that Lynch was used by the military,and used by the media, and that her fictional story was eaten up by a gullible American public. But people have always liked a story about a pretty woman being rescued (see Pretty Woman, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, most Romance novels, Jane Austen, most chick-lit, and that cartoon guy who constantly rescued his girlfriend from the railroad tracks...). There's nothing new, or primal, or post-9/11 about that. It's just human nature, and there are plenty of books out there explaining why this is, written by true academics with appropriate qualifications. Faludi's book is a waste of trees.