From the gleaming office towers of major corporations and the hallways of giant health-care conglomerates to college classrooms and the living rooms of private households, the world is witnessing a revolution as profound—and as transformative—as the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. In the coming decades, women will overtake men as primary breadwinners and become the most financially powerful generation of women in history. We’ve all seen the news reports on startling statistical trends (women are better educated than men and dominate seven of the 10 biggest growth industries in the U.S., the number of single women under 30 who out-earn their male peers is skyrocketing, more and more wives are becoming their family’s sole breadwinner, etc.). Now, for the first time ever, a journalist has done the research to tell us how this phenomenon is going to change our lives – in the workplace, at home, and in the bedroom – for the better.
She can be funny and sharp-tongued, warm and blunt, empathic and demanding. Who is the woman Barack Obama calls “The Boss”? In Michelle, Washington Post writer Liza Mundy paints a revealing and intimate portrait, taking us inside the marriage of the most dynamic couple in politics today. She shows how well they complement each other: Michelle, the highly organized, sometimes intimidating, list-making pragmatist; Barack, the introspective political charmer who won’t pick up his socks but shoots for the stars. Their relationship, like those of many couples with two careers and two children, has been so strained at times that he has had to persuade her to support his climb up the political ladder. And you can’t blame her for occasionally regretting it: In this campaign, it is Michelle who has absorbed much of the skepticism from voters about Obama. One conservative magazine put her on the cover under the headline “Mrs. Grievance.”
Skyrocketing infertility rates and the accompanying explosion in reproductive technology are revolutionizing the American family and changing the way we think about parenthood, childbirth, and life itself. In this riveting work of investigative reporting, Liza Mundy, an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post, captures the human narratives, as well as the science, behind what is today a controversial, multibillion-dollar industry, and examines how the huge social experiment that is assisted reproduction is transforming our most basic relationships and even our destiny as a species.