The Women of NOW by Katherine Turk is an example of a good book trying to do way too many things. Turk looks at the beginning of the National Organization of Women and specifically three women within NOW, Aileen Hernandez, Mary Jean Collins, and Patricia Hill Burnett. Unfortunately, I could also argue the book is not really about them.

Turk does a good job of calling out both the positives and negatives of NOW and its storied history. For instance, I would not have wanted to work for or with Betty Friedan. There are also a lot of stories which I found fascinating. Patricia Hill Burnett was a beauty queen, which you would think is a good thing, but her mother was enraged by it. Also, the founding meeting of NOW sounds like wonderful chaos.

Unfortunately, while Turk's writing is good, she tries to cover too much. Very often, the three subjects of the book disappear completely from the narrative. Turk introduces so many people in order to tell specific stories that it becomes a bit dizzying. Add in the fact that Turk needed to put all these people and places in context and you end up with an informative book which feels very disjointed and difficult to get into. I think if Turk tried to write a book on just one episode or one person, it would be a must read. This book just has too much scope and not enough focus.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)

This is a fascinating book about the feminism. I've always been intrigued by 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wave feminism in America and beyond. It was nice reading about the 3 important ladies who led the movement back in the '70s. My biggest complaint is the length of this book. It's a little too long and dense for my taste. It's still a good read and an important part of history.

I learned so much from this book. I’m female and definitely of the age of the initial stages of NOW. I must admit it was a stage in my working life where I thought we women should just “buck up,” get a job, tell men to go to hell. But as the years increased and my constant need to prove my skills in a world of men grew, I began to appreciate NOW more. I still had no idea about all of the accomplishments spoken of in this book. More so, this is a book of history. Not a book about the history of women’s rights but about the economic and political events that changed things for women, some good, some bad.

In my mind, there is an aspect even more important than what I have mentioned previously. It is that this book is readable. It’s not full of dry academia prose. It reads easily, at times almost story like, flowing and smooth. Yet in the midst of all this are enlightening educational points. I think the best way to describe this book is that while educational, it is really a fully enjoyable read.

Vital book about second wave feminism and the founding of such a crucial organization for equality. Great focus on Pauli Murray who does not get enough credit, and a good job approaching these complicated women with a balanced and nuanced perspective.