50 Years of Ms.

The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution

By: Katherine Spillar, Eleanor Smeal - introduction, Gloria Steinem - introduction

Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Imani Jade Powers, Donna Allen, Carolina Hoyos, Nancy Bober, Jonathan Todd Ross, Hayden Bishop, Heni Zoutomou, Nikki Massoud, Emily Lawrence, Annie Q

A celebration of Ms.—the most startling, most audacious, most norm-breaking of the magazine's groundbreaking pieces on women, men, politics (sexual and otherwise), marriage, family, education, work, motherhood, and reproductive rights, as well as the best of the magazine’s fiction, poetry, and letters. • Featuring Billie Jean King, Alison Bechdel, and Audre Lorde, among many others.

“I’ve been a Ms. reader since its earliest days. The magazine’s bold, boundary-breaking reporting has motivated me, infuriated me, and inspired me. And now this one extraordinary book—50 Years of Ms.—captures it all.” —Jane Fonda, actor and activist

“Ms.—in 1972—normalized being a woman, abortion and all. And here we are, 50 years later, needing that now more than ever.” —Sarah Silverman, comedian, actor, and writer

For the past five decades Ms. has been the nation’s most influential source of feminist ideas, and it remains at the forefront of feminism today, affecting thought and culture with a younger-than-ever readership (ages 16-20!).

Ms. was the first U.S. magazine to:

• feature prominent American women demanding the repeal of laws that criminalized abortion

• explain and advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment

• rate presidential candidates on women’s issues

• feature domestic violence and sexual harassment on its cover, long before either was widely understood or acknowledged

• commission and publish a national study on date rape

Here is the best reporting, fiction, and advertising, decade by decade, as well as the best photographs and features that reveal and reflect the changes set in motion by Ms., along with the iconic covers that galvanized readers.

Here are essays, profiles, conversations with and features by: Alice Walker, Cynthia Enloe, Pauli Murray, Nancy Pelosi, bell hooks, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Brittney Cooper, and Joy Harjo, as well as fiction and poetry by Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, and Sharon Olds, and many others.


* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF of visuals from the book.

Outstanding look at where we were and how things have changed.

Some 50 years ago I was near the end of my undergraduate life and at the beginning of my days as an advocate for women's issues, equal rights for all races and genders, protesting the war and fighting corrupt politicians. Happily this all happened at the beginning of Ms. Magazine. Today we can look back at the first 50 years of Ms. and appreciate “The best of the pathfinding magazine that ignited a revolution." A book that should be required reading!

Ms. Magazine was perfect for me, the daughter of a woman who called herself a feminist long before the word was common parlance. Ms. Magazine's articles spoke up, spoke out and told it like it was - it did not hold back. Topics of sexuality, sexism, family, education, reproductive rights, marriage, domestic violence and the Equal Rights Amendment were brought into the open. So influential was Ms. that many famous women, actresses, singers, politicians and business leaders openly signed a letter, printed by Ms, entitled: "I have had an abortion". Many things that were not spoken of in polite company were, through Ms., open for all to read and learn about on its pages. Ms. Magazine’s pages were open, honest, educational and refreshing.

From the blurb: A celebration of Ms.—the most startling, most audacious, most norm-breaking of the magazine's groundbreaking pieces on women, men, politics (sexual and otherwise), marriage, family, education, work, motherhood, and reproductive rights, as well as the best of the magazine’s fiction, poetry, and letters.

Inside this 50 year anthology you can read how Ms. came to be. You’ll find copies of the beautiful artwork that served as the magazine's covers as we as letters to the editor and many, many articles some of which are, sadly, as relevant today as they were then. Organized by decade, the book is easy to find your way around. Read a page at a time, whole sections or the entire book cover-to-cover, you’ll be delighted to learn (or remember) this history. A fascinating read, not just for those of us who lived through it but for anyone interested in the history of the struggles of women, the women’s movement, and what we are still facing today. "For the past five decades

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