Rebels in White Gloves

Coming of Age with Hillary’s Class—Wellesley ’69 by Miriam Horn

When the women of Hilary Clinton’s Wellesley class of 1969 entered the ivory tower, many were going for their “MRS.” By the time they graduated four years later, they faced a world turned upside down by the pill and bra-burnings, the Feminine Mystique and National Organization of Women, student protests, the counterculture, and the Vietnam War. In this social history, Miriam Horn retraces the lives of women caught on a historic cusp.

Theirs was the first generation to test-drive modern rules that remain complicated and contentious, on marriage and child-rearing, gender and sex, power, consent, privacy, self-exposure, religion, spirituality, aging. The head-spinning range and vibrancy of their stories captures this pivotal generation’s fateful choices. 

Praise

“Unpredictable and fresh … Like the experience of their most famous classmate, the lives of these Wellesley College graduates remind us how much and how little has changed for women…”  —People

“Searching, sensitive … That old feminist catchphrase ‘the personal is the political’ echoes throughout the book with a mature grasp of nuance and contradiction.” —Newsday

“Engrossing . . . finely etched … Horn turns a group portrait into a meditation on woman’s essential nature, her proper place and role… Like Mary McCarthy … she is a wry observer.”  —The New York Times Book Review

“Excellent … A laudably even-handed account.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A vivid and often humorous history of the women who helped revolutionize America.” —Cokie Roberts, author of We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters