SOURCE: “Fired, Fed-up, Discarded, and Scared,” in The Progressive, Vol. 63, No. 11, November, 1999, pp. 41-3.

In the following positive review of Stiffed, Flanders commends Faludi's journalism, though finds shortcomings in her focus on working-class men and the importance of male stereotypes. Flanders notes that some of the problems Faludi attributes to gender may actually have an economic basis.

I had the luck this summer to spend a weekend with my relatives Doug and Lori Chambers, and I thought of them as I read Susan Faludi’s latest book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. Doug Chambers is perhaps five feet five inches and 130 pounds: too small to be a he-man, but American through and through. If anyone promised him a productive life followed by a secure retirement, Doug was betrayed for sure. He served in the Army in the 1950s, then worked twenty-one years making concrete blocks. Two...