As Marie Claire said, A must-read for feminists with a sense of humour!!

I especially liked this book by Betsy Israel for its simple way of presenting ideas on Feminism and the entire movement right from the late 1800's to the 1963 Betty Friedan movement and till even as late as 1999. It captures readers attention and certainly made me more attentive unlike while i was reading The Feminine Mystique. It has some catchy stories, some bitchy and really disgusting facts about the bowery girls and spinsters and the Career Girls, but, thats what makes this book interesting. It is devoid of all the head-spinning statistics, instead the writer narrates the tales, stories, reports, journalistic pieces in magazines, and the likes in a very believable manner! I like Israel's writing skills.

This one is a great read and i believe much much better and enjoyable than all the other significant books on feminism and feminist issues and movements. ( )

I enjoyed this cultural and historical look at a type of life style I've never personally had. I don't think my college years count. On the first day of orientation I met my future husband. By our senior year we were living together. One month after graduation we were married. We're still married. I had fully expected to be a single girl for a while but it just didn't work out that way.

I really enjoyed her analysis of the cultural icons of the various decades. Her screenwriting background shows in her delightful analysis of a variety of films from the silent era all the way up through the recent television sitcoms. I think her final chapter is the weakest, but it's hard to analyize something while living in the middle of it.

I stayed up until one in the morning to finish the book which is a testiment to how well written it is. ( )

This is a 4.5 star-book. Sadly, Goodreads doesn't allow for half stars so I have to make do with an imperfect rating. Oh well.

Bachelor Girl is a riveting read. Its scope is both an asset and a fault - covering the representation of the single girl in all sorts of media and comparing it to the single girl's actual life, struggles and joys, and the author does so from the nineteenth century to basically Bridget Jones. It's interesting as an overview because it gives you so many starting points from which to research more should you wish to do so, but it's also disappointing in that it can only do so much by being so general.

That being said, her account is enormously interesting even though her conclusions, however horrible, are not terribly surprising. Betsy Israel writes with an honesty that's very refreshing for a history book and I greatly enjoyed every section.

Do read her introduction, she explains what she covered and what she didn't (this book is about the single white girl/woman, and while she branches out sometimes and features working class women, it's almost mostly about straight white middle-class single life in New York City). Another reviewer commented that she takes pains to really go into detail up till 1960 and then seems to lose interest, as if single women today weren't still considered a little different, if not downright peculiar.

Despite these limitations, this book is a must-read if you have an interest in history in general and woman history in particular. I'll be looking for more books on the subject that deal with the areas Israel didn't quite touch. ( )

http://books.moonsoar.com/archives/2012/09/26/bachelor-girl-100-years-of-breakin... ( )

Bachelor Girl is a cultural history of women living single over the past century. Israel begins with the traditional spinster of the late 1800's and continues to the Bridget Jones's of the 1990's, covering flappers, working women of WWII, "neurotic" and "perverted" singles of the 1940's and '50's, and the "swinging singles" of the 1960's.

While a very interesting and at times surprising read, Israel continually takes a Debbie Downer tone. Rather than truly celebrating single women throughout the 20th century, Israel's attitude is one of worried depression--again and again emphasizing how much of an OUTSIDER a single woman was 100, 75, 50 years ago...and still is today. Israel herself is married and laughably shares the story of how she too was once single...until she met her husband at the ripe old age of 27.

I really liked the historical tidbits and use of primary sources in Bachelor Girl. It reminded me of one of my favorite women's cultural history experts--Lynn Peril. However, the sad sack tone of the book irked me. It was like Israel was trying to "celebrate" singleness while pointing out how single women were and still are considered freaks by society (not by Israel herself, of course!) Lynn Peril and other cultural historians are able to take a grain of salt, "whew, glad those days are past!" attitude towards history and less palatable social norms--why can't Israel? ( )