In her new book When Everything Changed, New York Times columnist Gail Collins discusses the television shows, commercials, books and icons that were influenced by as well as influenced the women’s movement from the 1950s to the present. Below are some of the cultural influences that defined generations of women in America.

1952 to 1966
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet came to be thought of as the “prototypical American family: breadwinner father, stay-at-home mom, and their kids, nestled in their comfortable suburban home, eating pancakes.”

1953
Alfred Kinsey stuns the nation with his famous study Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, finding that half of American women had had sex before they were married.

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Edward M. Kennedy, who died on August 25 this year, was widely regarded as one of the great senators in the nation’s history. He was also the patriarch of America’s most heralded family. As readers of his poignant, searching memoir, True Compass, will discover in greater detail than ever before, his life was marked by tragedy and perseverance, sorrow and joy, reversal and redemption, loss and love. Here, as an introduction to True Compass, is a timeline of Kennedy’s life, with quotes from the book.

February 22, 1932

Edward Moore Kennedy is born, the youngest of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy’s nine children.

“I looked up to my older brothers. “Hero worship wouldn’t be too far off the mark. As long as I can remember, I wanted a boat so I could sail the way they did. They were my earliest sailing instructors, and they encouraged me more than they knew. I did my first solo sailing under their watchful eyes. “You can go as far as that boat anchored over there, Teddy, and then sail back to us…Stay inside the breakwater…Let me see you tack…now gybe.”

“No observation by Joseph Kennedy Sr. had as much lasting influence as [his] dictum: “There’ll be no crying in this house.” … To understand the profound authority of this charge to us is to understand much about my family.”

January, 1938

The Kennedys are in England, living in the 36-room U.S. embassy in London, where Joseph Kennedy is the first Irish-American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.

“For Bobby and me, the pageantry grew familiar in time, along with the peculiar diesel smell of London’s streets and the accents and the left-side driving. The demands of schoolwork took hold; and for me at least, a certain loneliness as well.

“The Gibbs School on Sloane Street near the square inaugurated my long and somewhat unhappy years of school life in Britain and then America; an endless succession of institutions, each of which had its own rules, cliques, standards, and punishment systems (I was to become something of an expert in punishment systems), and obstacles to being liked. I liked to be liked, and up until my school years I’d taken my likability for granted. After all, I was the youngest, used to being doted on by everyone. I am by nature and disposition a happy person. I like to laugh and have people laugh with me. If my siblings found themselves in trouble with Dad, they would sometimes send me into his room ahead of them to “soften him up” Read More

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by New York Times columnist Gail Collins chronicles the exciting path of the women’s movement from the Equal Rights Amendment and the formation of the National Organization for Women to Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential campaign. Below is a timeline of some of the most monumental and memorable moments for American women along this journey.

1923
The Equal Rights Amendment is written by Alice Paul and introduced in Congress.

1960
The birth control pill goes on sale, yet thirty states still have laws restricting the sale or advertising of virtually anything related to birth control.

1964
Representative Howard Smith of Virginia adds women to the minority groups to be protected from discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in order to obstruct the act, however in doing so the Civil Rights Act passes with the amendment intact and is signed into law due, in large part, to Rep. Martha Griffiths from Michigan and Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine—the only woman in the Senate f or most of her career.

1965
The Supreme Court rules 7 to 2 that Connecticut’s law that convicted  anyone using, buying, or helping someone acquire a birth control de vice, violates married couples’ constitutional rights.

1966
Betty Friedman and Pauli Murray hold a strategy session, during a conference of state commissions on the status of women, and invite “whoever we met who seemed interested in organizing women for action.” This turning point in the women’s movement calls for a NAACP for women, which is organized during a conference lunch with notes on napkins, and called the National Organization for Women (NOW). Read More

[Posted by Elena Sytcheva]

The PBC Pick for August is The Battle for America 2008 by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson. It’s a riveting account of the presidential election from two veteran journalists who followed its twists and turns from the first primary forays into New Hampshire and Iowa. We all know how this one ends, of course; and most of us are pretty familiar with the zigs and zags of the race as they happened. But Balz and Johnson take us deep inside the workings of three campaigns–John McCain’s, Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s–and, by way of exclusive interviews and firsthand description, give us the fullest and most intimate portrait yet of this epochal chapter of American political history.

We’ll be posting a lot about the book in the days and weeks to come, but for now, here’s a little refresher on Campaign 2008, courtesy of YouTube: Enjoy!

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[Posted by Sarah Silbert.]