STIFFED: The Betrayal of the American Man

New York, NY, U.S.A.: Morrow/Avon, 1999. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. As New/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Signed by author on title page. In STIFFED, Susan Faludi, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author of BACKLASH, the convention-smashing manifesto on women's embattled status, turns her impressive powers of reporting and analysis to the problems of men and comes up with a revolutionary diagnosis. The media portrait of men today is bleak: Men are said to be out of control, overcontrolling, dangerous, violent, and even, it has been written, obsolete. Their troubles are said to be internal, the result of testosterone poisoning, Y chromosomes, attention deficit order, a warlike nature. Furthermore, it's charged, men have only themselves to blame, for aren't they the ones in control of the culture? STIFFED takes us on a journey through a contemporary masculine landscape littered with broken promises and into the lives of individual men whose accounts reveal the heart of the male dilemma. Faludi intimately chronicles the struggles of industrial workers, sports fans, combat veterans, evangelical husbands, media executives, movie stars, porn actors, militiamen, astronauts, and "bad" boys--whose sense that they've lost their skills, jobs, civic roles, wives, teams, and secure futures is only one symptom of a larger and more profound collapse. By listening to men's stories in their own terms, Faludi uncovers a buried history--the untold story of how America made a set of glittering promises to the men of the baby-boom generation...and proceeded to break every one of them. A major reassessment of what it means to be a man in modern America, STIFFED has provoked a national discussion that could shatter the old paradigm of men versus women, and lay the groundwork for a culture that affirms the needs of everyone.662 pp. As new, first edition, first printing, in fine, mylar-protected dust jacket. [Not remainder-marked or price-clipped] NF37