All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation (49 page)

I'm especially grateful to those who read portions of this book at its earliest stages: Zoë Heller, Katha Pollitt, Rich Yeselson, Michelle Goldberg, Irin Carmon, Anna Holmes, Barbara Traister, and Jean Howard.

To all those I interviewed, on and off the record, who were so generous with their stories: thank you. My deep admiration also for the dozens of scholars cited in these pages. As the daughter of academics, I am keenly aware of my own scholarly limitations and am grateful for the historians, sociologists, literary critics, and economists on whose work I have drawn here. I feel lucky to know the historians Rachel Seidman and Amy Bass well enough to have asked them to take a look, and lucky too to have had the voice of Northwestern's Carl Smith in my head for twenty years, nudging me always toward history. I've learned so much from the faculty and students at the many colleges and universities I've visited, and especially thank Denise Witzig at St. Mary's in California, who shared with me her syllabus for a class about the Bachelor Girl and provided this project its earliest roadmap.

Thanks to those editors who have born with me, including Lauren Kern, Adam Moss, Laurie Abraham, Lisa Chase, Robbie Myers, Greg Veis, Chloe Schama, Gabriel Snyder, Ryan Kearney, Michael Schaffer, Franklin Foer, Kerry Lauerman, and Joy Press.

Friendships with Kimberly and Lin-Lee Allen, Judy Sachs, Lisa Hollett, Becca O'Brien Kuusinen, Michael Freidman, Abbie Walther, Benedicta Cipolla, Heather and Edward McPherson, Tom McGeveran, Lori Leibovich, Hillary Frey, Zoe Heller, Katie Baker, Allison Page, and Merideth Finn have long sustained me. To Sara Culley and Geraldine Sealey, this book is, by many measures, for you.

Finally, deep gratitude to, and for, my family. Barbara and Daniel Traister provided a retreat from domestic responsibilities; feeding me and giving me space to work for weeks at a time. Aaron and Karel Traister kept me laughing and Pheroze Wadia kept me talking. Jean Howard and Jim Baker regularly saved the day. Rosie was born days after this book was sold, Bella days after the manuscript was handed in; Marion Belle has provided exceptional care for them and in doing so, made my work and my husband's work possible. Rosie and Bella, your lives will be filled with possibilities that your great-grandmother, whose story is recounted here, could never have fathomed, and I'm so excited to see what you make of them. And to Darius: we were each whole people when we met, and you've made the whole of me happy, every minute of every day since. Thank you for our crowded, crazy life.

© ELIZA BROWN

REBECCA TRAISTER
is writer at large for
New York
magazine and a contributing editor at
Elle
. A National Magazine Award finalist, she has written about women in politics, media, and entertainment from a feminist perspective for
The New Republic
and
Salon
and has also contributed to
The Nation
,
The New York Observer
,
The New York Times
,
The Washington Post
,
Vogue
,
Glamour
, and
Marie Claire
. Traister's first book,
Big Girls Don't Cry
, about women and the 2008 election, was a
New York Times
Notable Book of 2010 and the winner of the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize. She lives in New York with her family.

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