The New York Times bestselling investigation into the sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women is  an informative and thought-provoking book for anyone who wanat to gain a greater understanding of this pivotal moment in history.

 

In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890-1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven. 

But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change-temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960.   

All the Single Ladies is a remarkable portrait of contemporary American life and how we got here, through the lens of the unmarried American woman.