cover image Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990: A Documentary History

Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990: A Documentary History

. Beacon Press (MA), $40 (521pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-6760-4

The author of the first birth control tract published in the U.S. (1830) was a man, Robert Dale Owen. A vocal minority of American men have actively supported women's struggles for equality, better wages, suffrage, the right to abortion and other causes. This pioneering volume, an anthology of writings by men who have either advocated or campaigned for women's rights, will serve as an inspirational sourcebook for both men and women. The ``pro-feminists'' represented are a diverse lot, including Howard Cosell and Alan Alda (both supporters of ERA), Thomas Paine, John Dewey, Gore Vidal, Jesse Jackson, free-love advocates and Greenwich Village radicals like novelist Floyd Dell. In their interlinking essays, sociologist Kimmel ( Men Confront Pornography ) and Mosmiller, substance abuse director at San Francisco General Hospital, explore to what extent the pro-feminists implemented their egalitarian views in their personal lives. (Feb.)