SOURCE: Feldman, Gayle. “Heilbrun on Steinem, Steinem on Heilbrun.” Publishers Weekly 242, no. 37 (11 September 1995): 25-6, 30.

In the following essay, Feldman explores the collaboration between Heilbrun and Gloria Steinem, which resulted in The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem.

She's the woman who told the world, “This is what 40 looks like,” and made many yearn to look just like that.

She's been treated as an icon—and as a pinup. For years, her life has been picked over for public delectation.

There was the childhood spent alternately on the road or in a bathing suit at the lakeside resort her family struggled to run; the years from 10 through 17, after her parents' divorce, taking care of a mother whose mind wandered in and out of reality; the escape to Smith College and the life of the 1950s “good girl”; the sojourn in India, long before it became fashionable...